Leopard tortoises

Thanks a lot Karen,
i'm a little bit proud now ;-)
Now I know also the correct name of this beautiful creature !!

Congrats Isabella, your spotting has been featured in the Project Noah Valentine's Day blog! http://blog.projectnoah.org/post/4308288...

Hello Jen.J , thanks for the information, the colors in the picture are fairly accurate, the female was indeed lighter colored than the male, when I look at the links that you have sent, I would rather think of the Leopard Tutoise, mainly by the shape of the shield, but indeed it is not easy.

Here are wikipedia pages about both species so you can look at the photos there and see if that's what you saw:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_tor...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_spu...

Great photos!

It's hard to tell from the lighting in the photo, but did they look very different in color when you saw them? I'd almost guess the male tortoise is a leopard tortoise and the female is a sulcata tortoise...but did the female have dark markings like the tortoise on top? They sulcata is the 3rd largest and the leopard tortoise is the 4th largest tortoises in the world, so they could be pretty close in size, depending on the age of the tortoises.

Terrific spotting Isabella! I love it!

♥♥♥♥♥

Thanks Alice for your suggestion.
They were rather large turtles, I estimate a length of about 70/80 cm.

I would guess gopher turtles, but wait for a confirmation from someone else.