A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Gopherus morafkai
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.
Sonoran desert hillside.
My guess is that this is a female, based on the narrowness of the shell and its concavity.
Spotted on Oct 10, 2012
Submitted on Oct 10, 2012
2 Comments
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.
wow very nice :) I hope to see a wild one some day thank you for adding it to my mission