Rafetus swinhoei

Everyday I get loads of news about turtles from around the world, some of them are funny, some are interesting, some I don't even bother about, some worries me and some are truly negative to get. The IUCN has a species of the day. As you surely understand it changes every day and since it was yesterdays animal ( what could it be on world Turtle Day?, hm.. )  I wanted to show you, you better se here; http://www.iucnredlist.org/sotdfiles/rafetus-swinhoei.pdf. This is seen upon as the most endangered of all the turtles in the world. Not a big surprise if you know it's only four known individuals left of this species.

Even if it's only four of these animals left, conservationists have not given up. They have placed two of them together in a Zoo, and they have teamed up together, laid eggs. But so far no hatchlings has been produced.  One of the people working on this project is the prominent herpetologist ( a person working with both reptiles and amphibians ) Gerald Kuchling, said that the pairing was a success, so we still must wait in hope for a breeding with hatchlings.

The Rafetus swinhoei, also known as Shanghai soft-shell turtle, Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle, is as the name says, a turtle with a soft shell. And they are really soft sheeled, it's more like a extra thick layer of skin. That leaves them more vulnerable for praying or for being injured from rocks. There are many soft shell turtles around the world and they are found in waterways in almost all the continents. The Rafetus swinhoei area of living has been the Red River of Yunnan and Vietnam, and the lower Yangtze floodplain.

What's the reason then for the turtles to become so close to extinction? The turtles have been used as food and their body, like skull and carapace has been used as medicine or as trophees. Furthermore they are the victims of habitat loss. The more or less only ways to help this turtle is to work more to get the captivated turtles to breed with success and search for other unknown animals in the free.

while we do our effort to help the loggerhead from coming in the same situation, lets give our thought and symbolic help to all those striving for the best of the Rafetus swinhoei