One warm June night in 2019, a solitary turtle clambered out of her large fishpond and up the tiled ramp to a specially created spawning area.
The stones and the plants there had been removed, and the sand had been raked, sieved and sprinkled with water. It was just the way she liked it.
When your species is critically endangered, nothing is too much trouble for the scientists who care for you. Using her hind legs and webbed feet, she then excavated a chamber, deposited 112 spherical, rigid, grape-sized eggs, covered them with sand and went on her way.
Little is known about the ecology of the Burmese narrow-headed softshell turtle, so when scientists at the Pearl River Fisheries Research Institute in Guangzhou, China, had the chance to try breeding them in captivity, they were keen to try.
Adult Burmese narrow-headed softshell turtles have flexible, leathery, slate-coloured carapaces that are around a metre (3.3ft) long. This makes the aquatic species one of the largest freshwater turtles in the world.
They have stripy necks, pointy heads and short snouts. Numbers are declining because of habitat destruction and because the reptiles are taken from their freshwater homes in Myanmar and Thailand, and transported to China, where they’re illegally sold for food.
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The turtle doesn’t breed readily in captivity, but the Chinese scientists had experience with other related species, so they prepared the site and set up a surveillance camera.
The two adult turtles, who were accidentally captured and rescued from the Mekong River, had lived in the pond for 25 years alongside carp and tilapia. To help get them in shape, the big fish were removed, and small fry were added for the carnivorous reptiles to eat.
The hard work paid off. Over the next few months, the female returned to spawn four more times. She laid a total of 564 eggs, which were excavated by the scientists, and transferred into sand-filled plastic boxes, maintained at a constant temperature and humidity.
Sixty-five days after each clutch was laid, 39 per cent of the eggs hatched successfully and the scientists rejoiced as they welcomed around 200 new Burmese narrow-headed softshell turtles into the world.
Each weighed about the same as a tablespoon of butter and had a shell that was just over 3cm (1in) wide.
When the scientists last reported on them, in a 2022 academic paper, 180 juveniles were still alive. They lived in plastic tanks in a greenhouse, where they dined on live fry and had increased their body weight 15-fold.
It’ll be years before the youngsters reach adulthood, but the story is already a success. Scientists now know something about this unique turtle’s breeding biology. The plan is to continue to learn and breed more.
The hope is that, as numbers of the turtle decline in the wild, numbers in captivity will grow, and that one day these turtles and their descendants could be released back into their native rivers to restore the wild population.
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