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Testudines · ChelidaeEntry 12,954 of 21,572
Dahl’s Toadhead Turtle, Mesoclemmys dahli

Reptilia · Testudines

Mesoclemmys dahliZangerl & Medem, 1958

Dahl’s Toadhead Turtle

Photograph by Luis Rojas, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons

A nocturnal, meat-eating turtle from the Neotropic region, reaching 23 cm across the shell.

Reptilia › Testudines › Chelidae › Mesoclemmys

Grows to
297mm
greatest recorded
Eats
Carnivorous
Active
Nocturnal
Lives up to
27.4years
Body length across Chelidae

Longer than 62% of all species in Chelidae anyone has measured.

62% of 42 species are smaller38% larger
155 mmthe whole family, smallest to largest500 mm

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 155 to 500 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

28 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
Unspecified

The animal itself

Colour on the back
Brown
Pattern on the back
Uniform
Pupil
Round
Venomous
No
Fangs
None
Longest recorded life
27.4years

Size

Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
297mm11.5 in

total length, tail included — Colston, Kulkarni, Jetz, and Pyron, 2020, BMC Evol. Biol., 20:81

Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
229mm9 in

straight carapace length, measured in a line rather than over the curve

Largest juvenile · shell length
33mm1.25 in
Body mass · greatestcomputed
2550g5.6 lb

largely converted from length by allometry in the source

Body mass · a typical adult
777g1.7 lb

AnAge rates this record "acceptable"

Body mass at hatching
15.16g0.53 oz

How it lives

Diet
Carnivorous

Amphibians, invertebrates, fish

How it hunts
Active foraging
Active
Nocturnal
Where it lives
Arboreal, saxicolous, terrestrial
Region
Neotropic

Breeding

Reproduction
Oviparous
Average clutch
4eggs
Eggs or young per clutch
1–6eggs
Egg length
35mm1.5 in
Egg width
28mm1 in

Naming and history

Subspecies
No
Described by
Zangerl & Medem
Moved to another genus · since it was first described
Yes
Described in
1958

Keeping one

Dahl’s Toadhead Turtle 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 Dahl’s Toadhead Turtle. 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.

209kJ per day

Worked out for an animal of 2,550 g, the heaviest recorded for Dahl’s Toadhead Turtle — 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
  • — 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 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
  • — Habitat
  • — Active in
  • — Mainland or island
  • — Lowest it lives · above sea level
  • — Highest it lives · above sea level
  • — Range size

Others in Chelidae

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). Mesoclemmys dahli. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mesoclemmys-dahli

@misc{mesoclemmys_dahli_2026,
  title  = {Mesoclemmys dahli},
  author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mesoclemmys-dahli}
}

Sources

  1. Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
  2. Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
  3. 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.
  4. AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.