#testudinidae

Chance encounter with a celebrity

[ID: a digital illustration of a brown tortoise with a long neck stretched up to eat a prickly pear fruit.]

Galapagos giant tortoises (Chelonoidis niger) in Santa Cruz's Highlands. Galapagos Archipelago

Yuri Gagarian, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin are all heroes of the 1960s Space Race, but there is another name that has been forgotten by history: Testudo horsfieldii. More commonly known as the Central Asian tortoise, two members of this species were the first Earthlings to successfully circle around the Moon and return safely to Earth, on the Soviet ship Zond 5 in September of 1968!

Elongated Tortoise (Indotestudo elongata), family Testudinidae, order Testudines, Assam, India

Critically Endangered