What are the top ten endangered animals in China?

basic document

Chinese name: tortoise

Common names: spotted salamander, giant salamander, soft-shelled turtle and Taihu soft-shelled turtle.

Latin name: Rafetus swinhoei

English name: Swinhoe's soft-shelled turtle

Species name and year: gray, 1873.

Target: tortoise.

Family: soft-shelled turtle

Genus: turtle.

Species information

The back plate is 360~570 mm long, and the width is only slightly smaller than the length, which is almost circular. The body is flat, only slightly raised, and the back is smooth and shiny. There are many yellow spots in dark olive green (or black green), and there are countless yellow spots in the middle, sometimes forming irregular circles around the yellow spots; In the part corresponding to the Oracle bone, yellow stripes form horizontal and vertical interlaced lines or radial lines. The back of the head, neck and limbs are also dark green with irregular yellow spots. This dense yellow stripe is characteristic of turtles. Living in rivers and lakes, benthic. Feeding on aquatic animals. China's unique spawning. Distributed in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and around Taihu Lake.

Endangered status quo

Tortoise is a national first-class protected animal, which is extremely rare. It is a more endangered "giant panda in the water" than the Chinese sturgeon. Lv Shunqing, coordinator of WCS amphibian and reptile species project, said that turtles are the most endangered species. At present, there are only five known surviving turtles in the world, all of which are in artificial breeding, including Suzhou Zoo 1 turtle, Suzhou saionji 2 turtles, and Restoration Jianhu 1 turtle. Changsha zoo 1.

Living habits

Before and after the annual fright, the hibernating turtles buried in the mud at the bottom of the pool began to wake up. The temperature in spring is warm first and then cold. The tortoise in Suzhou Zoo just surfaced before sunny noon, swam slowly with its head held high, and then crawled on the edge of the stone island in the pool. The whole turtle is semi-submerged in shallow water and stays still for a long time, resembling the rocks on the edge of the island. Usually, the submerged glans penis is lifted only once every 2-3 minutes. When it exhales, it ejects a small stream of water contained in its mouth, and then opens its mouth and lifts its nose to inhale. 10~ 15 seconds later, it sinks into the first water. This breathing action is repeated and endless.

The zoo regularly feeds turtles every other day. Usually, the breeder will beat the water at the food table with his hands or boards at 2 pm. Under the message of water wave oscillation, the thin and tired turtle began to move its heavy body, leave the island, swim to the food table and eat food. The turtle's food intake is related to the season and temperature. The temperature is high in summer, and the turtle has a strong metabolism, so it eats more. You can swallow chicken (breast) 1~ 1.5 kg per meal, but it is not obvious to feed miscellaneous fish. After a full meal, I often wander around the pool, which makes me more relaxed. At this time, you can see the turtle's back, skirt, straight tail, light paddling limbs, long neck and bright eyes. This kind of swimming sometimes lasts about 1 hour. Although the turtle's skirt is clearly visible, it is not full, which is obviously related to the poor water quality, poor nutrition and poor sanitation in the living environment. The gardener often throws all kinds of food at the tortoise, and it is willing to accommodate it. In hot summer or cold days, turtles are indifferent to feeding. Even at the dinner table, it looks dull, listless and has no appetite. Generally, after swimming around the food table for two or three laps, sink to the bottom of the water or go back to the island to rest. Therefore, it is not uncommon for turtles not to eat for a few days or a week.

Suzhou Siangji's discharge pond has a vast area, clear water quality and keeps circulation all the year round. There are two turtles in the pond, which are stronger in physique and mobility than those in Suzhou Zoo. They often swim out of the water intermittently and swim together. However, because there is no island in the pool, they only occasionally stop at the rockery in Chi Pan, and are slightly disturbed, so they abandon the shore and dive into the water.

Ethnicity

Trionyx sinensis was once widely distributed in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the red river basin in southern Yunnan and northern Vietnam. This evidence can be found in historical records—

According to legend, there were two large ponds surrounded by stone fences in front of the Fanyamen in Hangzhou in the Qing Dynasty, which contained the Watergate of Fanku. The giant salamander guarding the Watergate is in the pool, and Hangzhou people call it the "epileptic giant salamander". These legends are difficult to verify, but "Fan Watching the Giant Panda Fish" is a scene on the streets of Hangzhou, which has remained unchanged for decades.

Cao Xueqin, who once lived in Nanjing, mentioned turtles in A Dream of Red Mansions. In the twenty-third episode of The West Chamber, "Wonderful, the Peony Pavilion is full of colorful songs", Jia Baoyu said, "Tomorrow I will fall into the pool and be swallowed by a donkey. When you become a' Mrs. Yipin' and die of illness, I will go to your grave to carry a monument for you for a lifetime. "

Ting Anne Feng Lu Qiao Yi Ba Lu has a poem "Looking at the Immortals in the West Garden", which records the scene of "Giant Catfish" living freely in the release pond in saionji: flowers are floating in the Hongqiao with nine twists, and the pond in the West Garden is as blue as oil. Persuade Lang not to throw incense bait and let him wander freely.

But it was not until 100 years ago that the tortoise was slowly recognized by human beings.

1873, John Gray, a British scholar, identified several large turtles captured by a British consul in Shanghai as new species and named them Osaria swinhoei. Except for a museum specimen, after more than ten years of searching, no wild population of Trionyx sinensis was found. Later, the scholar Mei Lan changed Osaria Swinhoe to Rafites Swinhoe. 1880, a Frenchman named the big turtle caught in the Huangpu River as a new species, and wrote that the new species was very different from the giant salamander. But because people always called it catfish at that time, he did as the Romans do and called it spotted catfish. According to textual research, the turtle named by Gray is actually a spotted salamander named by Heude.

During the period of 1984, Zhang Minghua, a Chinese scholar, studied the skeletal fossils of Eriocheir sinensis unearthed from Luojiajiao Neolithic site in Tongxiang, Zhejiang Province, and named them Eriocheir sinensis. In fact, the giant salamander in Taihu Lake is a turtle, because he did not refer to the literature of British and French scholars at that time.

The giant salamander, giant salamander, soft-shelled turtle, spotted salamander and Taihu salamander mentioned above are all spotted soft-shelled turtles. In the long years that followed, there were almost no follow-up reports from China scholars, and they didn't even know whether it was an effective species, its geographical distribution and living habits. Therefore, in the classification of Trionyx sinensis in China, there was once a chaotic situation-it was considered as a synonym for Trionyx sinensis. Although many individuals were found, they were all identified as catfish, channel catfish and other species. Turtle specimens from all zoos and museums in China were wrongly identified as giant salamanders.

In order to support the construction of biology department of Suzhou Institute of Science and Technology, Suzhou Zoo presented two specimens of giant salamander, commonly known as "giant salamander". Zhao Kentang, a professor of biology at Suzhou Institute of Science and Technology, made a detailed study of its skull, back and abdominal armor and found that these two "giant salamanders" were turtles. After years of research, Zhao Kentang presented a lot of evidence to prove that the turtle is a unique species and the first person to correct its name. Since 1992, Zhao Kentang has been running in many ways to save the tortoise. His appeal caused repercussions, and Suzhou citizens regarded turtles as national treasures from now on.

Xie Yan, the representative of WCS China Project, said that there are three main criteria for judging the turtle: at first glance, the length of the carapace is over 80 to 1 10 cm, but the existing individual performance of the zoo insect hall is not optimistic; Second, according to the weight, it reaches 100 to 180 kg, but the larvae of Trionyx sinensis and Trionyx sinensis are very similar, so it is difficult to distinguish them. Third, look at the corpus callosum. There are two in the abdomen.

If human beings have never realized that it is an important reason why the turtle population is difficult to determine, then the fundamental reason for the sharp decline of its population is that its habitat-Taihu Lake and other places-has been polluted and disturbed by human activities. Moreover, people in China always like to mend turtles, among which turtles are big and have obvious goals, and they are more likely to be killed.