New Guinea snapping turtle

Amazing fact

The New Guinea snapping turtle fills its egg-laying hole with its hind legs.

Tropiquarium de Servion

New Guinea snapping turtle in its habitat (illustration)

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An illustration based on the real animal.

A little discovery to share.

The New Guinea snapping turtle fills its egg-laying hole with its hind legs.

SourceTropiquarium de Servion — New Guinea turtle

THE REAL WORLD

The real New Guinea snapping turtle

Scientific name: Elseya novaeguineae
Japanese name: ニューギニアカブトガメ
Group: Amphibians and reptiles

Class: Reptilia
Order: Testudines
Family: Chelidae
Genus: Elseya

Facts about the real animal.

A member of the snapping turtle group that lives in southern New Guinea.

鳥羽水族館 — ニューギニアカブトガメ

It eats a lot of plants.

鳥羽水族館 — ニューギニアカブトガメ

In the wild, it also catches and eats fish and crustaceans.

鳥羽水族館 — ニューギニアカブトガメ

How the New Guinea snapping turtle lives

It lives in places such as rivers and swamps near the coast. It mates in the water. The female lays her eggs on land in a hole dug in the ground. New hatchlings have brown shells with small black blotches.

Naturalis Biodiversity Center Tropiquarium de Servion

Basic data

Diet: Plants, fish, and crustaceans
Range: Southern New Guinea

鳥羽水族館

Where the New Guinea snapping turtle has been recorded

Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF

Where it livesAustralia Rivers and wetlands

Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.

Names around the world

日本語: ニューギニアカブトガメ
简体中文: 新几内亚癞颈龟
繁體中文: 新幾內亞癩頸龜
Deutsch: Neuguinea-Schnappschildkröte
Русский: Новогвинейская элсея

Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.

Sources and how we check

鳥羽水族館 — ニューギニアカブトガメChecked: 2026-11-04
Naturalis Biodiversity Center — Elseya novaeguineaeChecked: 2026-11-07
Tropiquarium de Servion — New Guinea turtleChecked: 2026-11-07

We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.

The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.

The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.

This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.

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