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Desert tortoise

Gopherus morafkai

Description:

Dark gray and brownish. Shell is 1 foot by 8 inches (32 x 20 cm), with hexagonal shields. Sitting in the middle of a trail in Saguaro National Park-Tucson Mountain District, and not at all shy.

Habitat:

Sonoran desert hillside.

Notes:

My guess is that this is a female, based on the narrowness of the shell and its concavity.

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2 Comments

DonnaTang
DonnaTang 12 years ago

Thank you, tajminator! I've been lucky: I've seen several in the wild over the years. Just keep looking! It's interesting that our Arizona and Sonora ones are now known to be a different species from the California/Mojave ones. The Colorado River is the boundary between the two.

the_tajminator
the_tajminator 12 years ago

wow very nice :) I hope to see a wild one some day thank you for adding it to my mission

DonnaTang
Spotted by
DonnaTang

Tucson, Arizona, USA

Spotted on Oct 10, 2012
Submitted on Oct 10, 2012

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