Reptilia · Testudines
Kinixys homeanaBell, 1827
Home’s Hingeback Tortoise
Photograph by Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
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A ground-dwelling, dawn-and-dusk, omnivorous tortoise from the Afrotropic region, reaching 223 mm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Testudines › Testudinidae › Kinixys
- Grows to
- 223mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Omnivorous
- Active
- Crepuscular
- Lives up to
- 4.5years
Longer than only 36% of all tortoises 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 99.8 to 1,200 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
24 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
- Brown, Yellow
- Pattern on the back
- Blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 4.5years
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 223mm8.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 2210g4.9 lb
total length, tail included — Colston, Kulkarni, Jetz, and Pyron, 2020, BMC Evol. Biol., 20:81
largely converted from length by allometry in the source
How it lives
- Diet
- Omnivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Crepuscular
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest
- Region
- Afrotropic
Invertebrates, plants
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 3eggs
- Egg length
- 46mm1.75 in
- Egg width
- 35mm1.5 in
Naming and history
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Bell
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1827
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.
184kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 2,210 g, the heaviest recorded for Home’s Hingeback Tortoise — 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.
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 1 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
- Shell colourbreeder consensus
How dark or how yellow the shell is and how sharply the rear of it flares. Varies between individuals and with the population.
Worth knowing. This species is Critically Endangered and is collected heavily both for the pet trade and for food. Almost every animal offered is a wild-caught import rather than captive-bred, and they typically arrive dehydrated and heavily parasitised.
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
- — Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
- — 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
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — 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
- — Smallest clutch recorded
- — Largest clutch recorded
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches in a year
- — 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
- — Sex decided by
- — 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 Testudinidae
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). Kinixys homeana. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/kinixys-homeana
@misc{kinixys_homeana_2026,
title = {Kinixys homeana},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/kinixys-homeana}
}Sources
- 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.
- 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.