Animal Directory Featured species in the planned Desert Trails habitat
Mojave Desert Tortoise
Gopherus agassizii
VU
Fun facts
- Spends roughly 95% of its life underground in self-dug burrows, emerging mainly in the cool hours to forage on annual grasses and wildflowers.
- Can store water in an enlarged bladder, sometimes up to 40% of its body weight, and reabsorb it slowly through long droughts of a year or more.
- Lives 50-80 years in the wild — some individuals exceed a century — and only reaches reproductive maturity at 15-20 years, which is why population recovery is so slow.
- Will release stored bladder water as a defence if handled, leaving the tortoise dangerously dehydrated; visitors are kept off-limits during keeper handling.
- IUCN listed as **Vulnerable**; the species has declined more than 90% in parts of its Mojave range from disease, road mortality, and habitat loss.
From the master plan
The Desert Tortoise inhabits the Desert Discovery Hut habitat near the keeper-talk station of Desert Trails. The exhibit’s deep sand and rock substrate allows the tortoise to dig real burrows the way it would in the Mojave, and a seasonally cooled basking yard tracks the species’ natural activity rhythm.
IUCN status sourced from the Mojave Desert Tortoise assessment (Berry et al., 2021) on the IUCN Red List —
Gopherus agassiziilisted as Vulnerable with a continuing population decline.
Find them in
Zone 11
Desert Trails
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