Pancake Tortoise
Today is pancake day and i'm sure the tasty treats are on the forefront of everyone's mind. So to add a little wildlife fun to the day i'd like to introduce you to a unique little reptile called the Pancake tortoise.
The Pancake tortoise is a medium sized tortoise from Africa, specifically Kenya and Tanzania, where it enjoys a life of around 25 years on the Savannah and Scrublands, there it spend its days eating Fruit, Grasses, Leaves, Seeds and relaxing on warm rocks in the African sun.
A unique characteristic of this tortoise is that it has a soft flexible shell. This is very unusual because as many of you will know a tortoise’s shell acts as the animals armour defending it against attacking predators, so you’d think that having a soft shell would be a very bad idea for the Pancake tortoise.
But don't be fooled evolution hasn't made a mistake here.
This soft shell is believed to have evolved to help the Pancake tortoise escape and hide from predators instead of defending against them. When there is a predator nearby the Pancake tortoise will move to the nearest rocky area and wedge itself between the rocks where they will be safe from any predators, This is only possible thanks to their unique soft shell.
In the past it was thought that the Pancake tortoise would secure itself by inflating its body like a balloon inside the rocky gaps. Whilst that would have been hilarious and amazing unfortunately this is not true, the tortoise instead uses is forearms and legs to hold onto the rock.
This little variation has lead to a very interesting animal that we can enjoy learning about whilst we enjoy a nice stack of pancakes.
If you enjoy learning about reptiles then check out Oliver's posts on his reptile obsession
Or if you’d like to look into the Pancake tortoise yourself there is a reference below to get you started
Ireland, L. C., & Gans, C. (1972). The adaptive significance of the flexible shell of the tortoise Malacochersus tornieri. Animal behaviour, 20(4), 778-781.