Reptilia · Testudines
Apalone spiniferaLesueur, 1827
Cuatro Cienegas Softshell
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
A water-living, day-active, omnivorous turtle from the Nearctic region, reaching 5 cm across the shell.
Also called Black Spiny Softshell Turtle, Guadalupe Spiny Softshell Turtle, Gulf Coast Spiny Softshell Turtle.
Reptilia › Testudines › Trionychidae › Apalone
- Grows to
- 550mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 50years
Longer than only 25% of all species in Trionychidae anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 230 to 2,000 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
29 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Population trend
- Stable
The animal itself
- Colour on the back
- Brown
- Pattern on the back
- Uniform
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 50years
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 550mm21.5 in
- Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
- 54mm2.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 14,274g31 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 4765g11 lb
- Body mass at hatching
- 9.47g0.33 oz
total length, tail included — Colston, Kulkarni, Jetz, and Pyron, 2020, BMC Evol. Biol., 20:81
straight carapace length, measured in a line rather than over the curve
largely converted from length by allometry in the source
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Aquatic
- Habitat
- Wetlands
- Region
- Nearctic
Invertebrates, plants
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, ZW/ZZ
- Average clutch
- 18eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 9–38eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1.5per year
- Age at first breeding · female
- 3285days
Naming and history
- Subspecies
- Apalone spinifera aspera (AGASSIZ 1857) Apalone spinifera atra WEBB & LEGLER 1960 Apalone spinifera emoryi (AGASSIZ 1857) Apalone spinifera guadalupensis (WEBB 1962) Apalone spinifera pallida (WEBB 1962) Apalone spinifera spinifera (LESUEUR 1827)
- Described by
- Lesueur
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1827
Keeping one
No enclosure size is given here
The standard sets enclosure size for turtles and tortoises genus by genus, and this genus is not among the roughly sixty it lists. No figure is given rather than one borrowed from a different animal.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Cuatro Cienegas Softshell. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
967kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 14,274 g, the heaviest recorded for Cuatro Cienegas Softshell — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Still living
- — Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- — Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest female · snout to vent
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · snout to vent
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches a year · fewest
- — Clutches a year · most
- — First breeds from · youngest recorded
- — First breeds by · oldest recorded
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Limbs
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Red List criteria
- — Biome
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Suborder
- — Infraorder
- — Type locality
- — Active in
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
- — Highest it lives · above sea level
- — Range size
Others in Trionychidae
- (Indian) Peacock Soft-shelled Turtle
- Amur Softshell Turtle
- Asian Giant soft-shelled Turtle
- Asian or Bibron’s Giant soft-shelled Turtle
- Asiatic Softshell Turtle
- Aubry’s Soft-shelled Turtle
- Bostami Turtle
- Burmese Flap-shelled Turtle
- Burmese Soft-shelled Turtle
- Chinese Soft-shelled Turtle
- Chinese stone slab soft-shelled turtle
- Euphrates Soft-shelled Turtle
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Apalone spinifera. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/apalone-spinifera
@misc{apalone_spinifera_2026,
title = {Apalone spinifera},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/apalone-spinifera}
}Sources
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- Moura, M. R. et al. TetrapodTraits: a database of 33,281 tetrapod species. Used under CC BY 4.0. Observed values only; this encyclopedia does not publish its imputed predictions.