Marble Cherryhead Tortoise For Sale

The Marble Cherryhead Tortoise For Sale (Chelonoidis carbonarius) is a species of tortoise from northern South America. These medium-sized tortoises generally average 30 cm (12 in) as adults, but can reach over 40 cm (16 in). They have dark-colored (nearly black), “loaf”-shaped carapaces (top shell) with a lighter patch in the middle of each scute (shell segment), and a somewhat lighter-colored plastron (underbelly).

They also have dark limbs dotted with brightly-colored scales, from which they get their name, that range from pale yellow to vivid or dark red. Visible differences are noted between red-footed tortoises from varying eco-regions. They are closely related to the more easterly-distributed yellow-footed tortoise (C. denticulatus) of the Amazon Basin.

Their natural habitat ranges from savannah to forest edges around the Amazon Basin. They are omnivorous tortoises, consuming a wide assortment of plants, grasses, flowers, fruit and (notably) fungi, as well as the occasional earthworm or other invertebrate. When presented with the opportunity, many tortoises will also scavenge on carrion. They do not brumate, due to their equatorial home range, but may aestivate in the hotter, drier months.

Marble Cherryhead Tortoise For Sale (and yellow-footed) tortoises are popularly kept as pets. Over-collection of eggs, and the capturing of mature animals, from their native habitat has caused them to be listed as “vulnerable” to extinction, despite the relative ease of captive breeding and the availability of captive-bred tortoises.

Additionally, many remote tribal groups living in South America still consider the tortoises a basic source of meat, and many are unaware of the species’ overall plight; many travelers and activists report seeing live red-footed tortoises for sale in markets where bushmeat and live animals are sold.

Eggs, hatchlings, and even mature tortoises are food for many animal predators, including caimans, crocodiles and giant otters (if near water), as well as birds of prey, bushdogs, jaguars, jaguarundis, margays, certain monkeys, ocelots, pumas and tayras. Population density ranges from locally common to very scarce due, in-part, to habitat destruction and the aforementioned over-collection for food and the pet trade.

The species name has often been misspelled as carbonaria, an error introduced in the 1980s when Chelonoidis was elevated to genus and mistakenly treated as feminine, an error recognized and fixed in 2017.

Marble Cherryhead Tortoise For Sale were originally assigned to the genus Testudo (named by Carl Linnaeus in 1758) for a short time, but it soon became the term for turtles with high-domed shells, elephantine legs, and completely terrestrial habits—the tortoises.

In 1835, Leopold Fitzinger used Geochelone to differentiate some non-Mediterranean tortoises, apparently based on size and lack of specific identifying characteristics such as the hinged shell in the African hingeback tortoises. He used the term Chelonoidis as a subgenus for the species from South America. Few people used these terms until they were resurrected by Hewitt in 1933 and Loveridge and Williams in 1957.

In 1982, Roger Bour and Charles Crumly each separated Geochelone into different genera based on anatomic differences, especially in the skulls. That resulted in the formation or restoration of several genera: Aldabrachelys, Astrochelys, Cylindraspis, Indotestudo, Manouria, and Chelonoidis. Chelonoidis was distinguished from other Geochelone by their South American location, as well as the absence of the nuchal scute (the marginal centered over the neck) and the presence of a large, undivided supracaudal (the scute or scutes directly over the tail), as well as differences in the skull. Many of these generic names are still debated; for example, no specific definition of Geochelone is given, and Chelonoidis is primarily used for geography rather than unique anatomic characteristics.