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:
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)