Reptilia · Testudines
Chitra chitraNutaphand, 1986
Nutaphand's Narrowhead Softshell
Photograph by RatioTile, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
A day-active turtle from the Oriental region, reaching 150 cm across the shell.
Reptilia › Testudines › Trionychidae › Chitra
- Grows to
- 1400mm
- greatest recorded
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
- Weighs up to
- 168,181g
- greatest
Longer than 86% 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
21 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
- Critically Endangered
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown
- Pattern on the back
- Uniform
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 1400mm4 ft 7 in
- Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
- 1500mm4 ft 11 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 168,181g371 lb
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
How it lives
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Aquatic, terrestrial
- Region
- Oriental
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Temperature
- Average clutch
- 100eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
Naming and history
- Subspecies
- Chitra chitra javanensis MCCORD & PRITCHARD 2003 Chitra chitra chitra NUTAPHAND 1986
- Described by
- Nutaphand
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1986
Keeping one
Nutaphand's Narrowhead Softshell is assessed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
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 Nutaphand's Narrowhead Softshell. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
Feeding
8669kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 168,181 g, the heaviest recorded for Nutaphand's Narrowhead 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 · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Diet
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — 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
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — 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
- — Habitat
- — 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
- Cuatro Cienegas Softshell
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). Chitra chitra. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chitra-chitra
@misc{chitra_chitra_2026,
title = {Chitra chitra},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/chitra-chitra}
}Sources
- 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.
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.