Critically Endangered
Madagascan big-headed turtle
Erymnochelys madagascariensis
The Madagascan big-headed turtle is a turtle native to the waters of permanent slow moving rivers and lakes in western Madagascar.
Appearance
It has a hard dark brown shell enclosing all the soft parts of the body and, as its name indicates, a very large head. Young turtles have a soft pattern of fine black lines on their shells, but they disappear with age.
Range and habitat
This species inhabits large areas with freshwater such as permanent slow streaming rivers, backwaters and lakes. Many of the hatching and juvenile turtles move into smaller rivers, where they can grow quickly and safely before going into deeper and larger bodies of water. It can be found in the western lowland areas of Madagascar.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
Due to its ancient origins and threatened status, it is ranked as #1 on the EDGE of Existence programme's list of priority reptiles. The main threat for this species is that they are heavily exploited for food, caught in nets, fish traps and by hooks and lines. Another threat is land development as it destroys its natural habitat.
Despite their vulnerability to extinction, they are commonly eaten for food and they are still commonly shipped from Madagascar to Asia to help meet the demand of Asia's traditional medicine market. A captive breeding program has also been started to prevent the species from becoming extinct.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Madagascan big-headed turtle 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 Madagascan big-headed turtle, Wikidata item Q862042. 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.
