Reptilia · Testudines
Mesoclemmys ranicepsGray, 1856
Black-lined Toadhead Turtle
Photograph by Vincent A. Vos, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
A water-living, meat-eating turtle from the Neotropic region, reaching 330 mm nose to tail.
Also called Amazon Toadhead Turtle.
Reptilia › Testudines › Chelidae › Mesoclemmys
- Grows to
- 330mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Lives
- Aquatic
Longer than 76% of all species in Chelidae 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 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
18 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
The animal itself
- Colour on the back
- Brown, Yellow
- Pattern on the back
- Blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 330mm13 in
- Largest juvenile · shell length
- 49mm2 in
- Body mass at hatching
- 18g0.63 oz
total length, tail included — Colston, Kulkarni, Jetz, and Pyron, 2020, BMC Evol. Biol., 20:81
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- Where it lives
- Aquatic
- Habitat
- Wetlands
- Region
- Neotropic
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 90m
Amphibians
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
Naming and history
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Gray
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1856
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 Black-lined 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.
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
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · greatest
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Longest recorded life
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How it hunts
- — Active
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Average clutch
- — 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
- — Conservation status
- — Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- — Population trend
- — 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
- — Range size
Others in Chelidae
- (Western) Twist-neck Turtle
- Amazon Mata Mata
- Arnhem Land Long-Necked turtle
- Bells’ Turtle
- Big-headed Pantanal Swamp Turtle
- Black Spine-necked Swamp Turtle
- Brasilianische Krötenkopfschildkröte
- Brazilian Radiolated Swamp Turtle
- Cann's Snake-necked Turtle
- Chaco Side-necked Turtle
- Common Snake-necked Turtle
- Cotinga River Toadhead 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). Mesoclemmys raniceps. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mesoclemmys-raniceps
@misc{mesoclemmys_raniceps_2026,
title = {Mesoclemmys raniceps},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/mesoclemmys-raniceps}
}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.