Reptilia · Testudines
Psammobates tentoriusBell, 1828
Tent Tortoise
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, plant-eating tortoise from the Afrotropic region, reaching 145 mm nose to tail.
Reptilia › Testudines › Testudinidae › Psammobates
- Grows to
- 145mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 8years
Longer than only 11% 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
25 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
- Near Threatened
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown, Yellow
- Pattern on the back
- Blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 8years
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 145mm5.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 679g1.5 lb
- Body mass at hatching
- 10.61g0.37 oz
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
- Herbivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Shrubland
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 750m
Plants
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 1.37eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–3eggs
Naming and history
- Subspecies
- Psammobates tentorius tentorius (BELL 1828) Psammobates tentorius trimeni (BOULENGER 1886) Psammobates tentorius verroxii (SMITH 1839)
- Described by
- Bell
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1828
Feeding
Prey size does not apply. A herbivore's diet is judged on fibre, on the ratio of calcium to phosphorus, and on avoiding plants high in oxalates.
The animal does not take prey items. This is established practice, not a measurement.
65kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 679 g, the heaviest recorded for Tent 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.
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
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · a typical adult
- — 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
- — Active in
- — Mainland or island
- — Lowest 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). Psammobates tentorius. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/psammobates-tentorius
@misc{psammobates_tentorius_2026,
title = {Psammobates tentorius},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/psammobates-tentorius}
}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.