Description
Kleinmann's tortoise is the smallest tortoise in the northern hemisphere. Female tortoises are larger than the males; males are more slender and have a longer tail.
Their shells have high domes, and range in color from ivory to pale gold to dark brown to pink or dull yellow. This colouring strongly follows Gloger's Rule as it helps to regulate the impact of sunlight. This allows the paler tortoise to stay in the desert heat for longer. It is also an effective camouflage in the desert. The bottom of the shell is light yellow, often with two dark triangles on each abdominal scute. The tortoise's scutes have dark sidings that fade with age.
The head and limbs are a very pale ivory-yellow to yellowish-brown colour.
Read more about this topic: Kleinmann's Tortoise
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)