Reptilia · Testudines
Stigmochelys pardalisBell, 1828
Leopard Tortoise
Photograph by Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
_(17331907085).jpg){kind=link}
A ground-dwelling, active by day or night, plant-eating tortoise from the Afrotropic region, reaching 40 cm across the shell.
Reptilia › Testudines › Testudinidae › Stigmochelys
- Grows to
- 720mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Lives up to
- 54.9years
Longer than 89% 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
29 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
- Least Concern
The animal itself
- Colour on the back
- Black, Brown, Yellow
- Pattern on the back
- Blotched
- Pupil
- Round
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 54.9years
- Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- 32.6°C91 °F
mean body temperature of active individuals in nature
Size
- Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- 720mm2 ft 4 in
- Shell length, front to back · greatest recorded
- 400mm15.5 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 54,839g121 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 20,000g44 lb
- Body mass at hatching
- 59.58g2.1 oz
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
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Herbivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Cathemeral
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Savanna, Shrubland
- Region
- Afrotropic
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1450m
Plants
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Temperature
- Gestation or incubation
- 365days
- Average clutch
- 8.67eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 5–30eggs
Naming and history
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Bell
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1828
Keeping one
10 ft 6 in × 5 ft 3 in(320 × 160 cm)
Minimum floor length × width, for one animal. Bigger is always better. The standard sets no height for turtles and tortoises.
The standard sizes this genus at 8 times carapace length, with the width half the resulting length.
For a third and fourth turtle the standard asks for at least 10% more floor area each, and 20% more from the fifth onwards.
Water depth is set against the animal's carapace width rather than its length, so no figure is given here. Dry-country tortoises need no water area, only occasional bathing; tortoises from wetter regions need a water dish.
Swiss law reaches the same 8 × 4 of carapace length for land tortoises, arrived at separately from the German gutachten.
Gutachten über Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengruppe tierschutzgerechte Haltung von Terrarientieren), German Federal Ministry, 10 January 1997, section 5. The standard states these are recommendations rather than binding limits.
Swiss Tierschutzverordnung (TSchV), SR 455.1, Anhang 2, Tabelle 5 — legally binding minimum enclosure sizes, which give every land tortoise 8 × 4 body lengths for two animals.
From this animal’s own carapace length of 15.5 in (400 mm), at 8 times it — how this is worked out.
Active animals measured in the wild averaged 91 °F (32.6 °C).
Mean body temperature of active individuals measured in nature. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
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.
3201kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 54,839 g, the heaviest recorded for Leopard 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.
- Population and markingbreeder consensus
Adult size and how boldly the shell is marked, following the population an animal came from. South African animals run considerably larger than the widespread form.
Worth knowing. The leopard spotting is boldest on young animals and fades as the shell darkens with age, so an adult looks plainer than the hatchling in most photographs. Adults reach 40 cm and more across the shell and live beyond fifty years.
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 · adult female, mean
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — 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
- — 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 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). Stigmochelys pardalis. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/stigmochelys-pardalis
@misc{stigmochelys_pardalis_2026,
title = {Stigmochelys pardalis},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/stigmochelys-pardalis}
}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.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.
- 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.