Critically Endangered
Asian forest tortoise
Manouria emys
Asian forest tortoise is a tortoise in the family Testudinidae — Manouria emys, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
It has a broad, flattened upper shell and a large lower shell, with distinctive features on its head, limbs, and skin that set it apart from other tortoises. Dorsal shields show concentric striations (grooves) and are often concave. The lower shell (plastron) is large, with the gular region (throat area) produced (slightly extended) and typically notched (indented).
The largest adults of the northern subspecies (M. E. Phayrei) can reach 25 kg (55 lb) in the wild and much more in captivity. The carapace is considerably depressed (flattened), its depth less than half its length.
Range and habitat
M. Emys occurs in countries across Asia, that includes Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. The Asian forest tortoise is a tortoise in the family Testudinidae. The species is endemic to Southeast Asia.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
In captivity, individuals have accepted a wide variety of food, predominantly being herbivorous but occasionally consuming frogs, snails, or carrion when presented. M. Emys is the only tortoise that lays its eggs above ground in a nest, that the female constructs of leaf litter.
The female uses both front and rear legs to gather material for the nest and lays up to 50 eggs deep inside it. She then sits on and near the nest to protect it, and will "chase" predators and intruders away.
In crisis
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Asian forest tortoise is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Asian forest tortoise, Wikidata item Q900757. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
