Yellow-footed tortoise, Yasuni National Park, Ecuador
Conservation Status
Scientific Classifiction
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	Testudines
Suborder:	Cryptodira
Superfamily:	Testudinoidea
Family:	Testudinidea
Genus:	Chelonoidis
Species:	C. denticulatus
Binomial Name
Chelonoidis denticulatus (Linnaeus 1766)
Synonyms
Testudo denticulata Linneasus 1766 Testudo tabulata Walbaum, 1782 Testudo tessellata Schneider, 1792 Testudo tabulata Schoepff, 1793 Testudo terrestris americana Schweigger, 1812 Testudo terrestris brasiliensis Schweigger, 1812 Testudo terrestris var. cayennensis Schweigger, 1812 Testudo terrestris surinamensis’ Schweigger, 1812 Chersine denticulata Merrem, 1820 Chersine tessellata Merrem, 1820 Testudo cagado Spix, 1824 Testudo hercules Spix, 1824 Testudo sculpta Spix, 1824 Chersine tabulata Gravenhorst, 1829 Testudo planata Gmelin, 1831 Testudo foveolata Schinz, 1833 (nomen nudum) Geochelone (Chelonoidis) tabulata Fitzinger, 1835 Geochelone (Geochelone) denticulata Fitzinger, 1835 Chelonoides tabulata Agassiz, 1857 Chelonoidis tabulata Agassiz, 1857 Chelonoidis denticulata Fróes, 1957 Chelonoides denticulata Obst, 1980 Geochelone denticulta Richard, 1999

The Amazon yellow foot tortoises (Chelonoidis denticulatus), also known as the Brazilian giant tortoise, commonly referred to as the Brazilian giant turtle, or more commonly, the big turtle, is a species of tortoise in the family Testudinidea and is closely related to the red-footed tortoise (C. carbonarius). It is found in the Amazon Basin of South America. The species name has often been misspelled as denticulata, an error introduced in the 1980s when Chelonoidis was elevated to genus and mistakenly treated as feminine, an error recognized and fixed in 2017.^[3]

With an average length of 40 cm (15.75 in) and the largest known specimen at 94 cm (37 in), this is the sixth-largest tortoise species on Earth, after the Galapagos tortoise, the Aldabra tortoise, the African Spurred tortoise (Geochelone sulcata, typical size 76 cm (30 in)), the Leopard tortoise (Stigmochelys pardalis), and the Asian forest tortoise (Manouria emys emys, typical size 60 cm (23.6 in).

Amazon Yellow Foot Tortoise Diet 

The yellow foot tortoise eats many kinds of foliage. They are too slow to capture any fast animals. In the wild, their diets consist of grasses, fallen fruit, carrion, plants, bones, mushrooms, excrement, and slow-moving invertebrates such as snails, worms, and others they are able to capture. In captivity, they are fed oranges, apples, melons, endive, collard greens, dandelions, plantain, ribwort, clover, shredded carrots, insects, worms, cuttlebone, tortoise vitamins, edible flowers, and alfalfa pellets. Each yellow-footed tortoise in the wild reaches the age of maturity at about 8–10 years. The fecundity of a female generally depends on her size; the bigger they are, the more eggs they can produce. On average, a female will create about six to 16 eggs per year, although some female individuals may not reproduce each year. The eggs have brittle shells and are elongated to spherical, about 3–6 cm in diameter. The egg size will increase with the body size of the tortoise. The young are self-sufficient from birth. The yellow-footed tortoise can live around 50–60 years.