One of the 41 turtles and tortoises on WAnimals
Reptiles · Testudines · Podocnemididae
Giant South American River Turtle
Podocnemis expansa
It faces an extremely high risk of imminent extinction in the wild. See full glossary
The Arrau turtle or charapa is the largest freshwater turtle in the Americas and nests in mass arrivals on the sandbanks that emerge in the dry season. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Humboldt described concentrations of hundreds of thousands of females on the Orinoco; the industrial collection of eggs to extract oil put an end to almost all that abundance within a few decades.
Weight
25 kg – 90 kg
Size
60 cm – 1.1 m
Lifespan
70 years
Diet
Herbivore
Feeds mainly on plants.
Activity
Diurnal
Active mainly during the day.
Social structure
Colony
Lives in large concentrations, often for breeding reasons.
Sighting difficulty
Very hard
Fun facts
- In 1800 Humboldt described arrivals of hundreds of thousands of females on the Orinoco and reckoned that tens of millions of eggs were collected every year to make oil: for a century the species supported an industry that put an end to its own abundance.
- The hatchlings call to each other inside the egg to synchronise hatching and emerge all at once, and go on calling afterwards in the water to stay together in a group with the adult females, a form of parental care once thought not to exist in turtles.
- The sex of the hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the sand, so a change of a few degrees in the temperature of the sandbanks can skew the sex ratio of an entire generation.
Life cycle & biology
- Skeleton type
- Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton with a shell (reptile)
- Habitat & environment
- Great rivers of Amazonia and the Orinoco; nests on sandbanks during the dry season
- Size at birth
- About 5 cm of carapace on hatching
- Sexual maturity
- 12 years
- Gestation / incubation
- 50 days of incubation
- Litter / clutch size
- 90 eggs
Sources consulted: https://www.iucnredlist.org/ | https://animaldiversity.org/ | https://es.wikipedia.org/
Where to find it
See its range on the interactive mapBest time: From December to March on the beaches of the Orinoco and the Amazon, during the dry season, when thousands of females nest at once.
Where to watch it
Parks and dive sites where this species has been documented.
Related species
Other species in the catalogue with the most in common with Giant South American River Turtle — same habitat, park, country, tags or family.
White Bald-headed Uakari
Cacajao calvus
Plum-throated Cotinga
Cotinga maynana
Horned Screamer
Anhima cornuta
Northern Pygmy Marmoset
Cebuella pygmaea
Hoatzin
Opisthocomus hoazin
Red-Footed Tortoise
Chelonoidis carbonarius
How to help
The giant south american river turtle is classified as critically endangered. Organizations such as UICN, WWF y Wildlife Conservation Society work specifically on its conservation and that of its habitat; looking into their programs is a good starting point if you want to get involved.
It's documented in 8 real protected areas — part of why protecting these places matters for its conservation.
Keep exploring
Based on what we already know about giant south american river turtle.
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