Across the harsh, sun-scorched edges of the Sahara and the Sahel, one of Africa's largest reptiles has been quietly doing something that scientists are only now beginning to properly study, digging burrows so extensive that they may be reshaping the very soil around it. The African spurred tortoise, known scientifically as Centrochelys sulcata, is the largest tortoise species found on mainland Africa and the third largest in the world, with adult males sometimes weighing more than a hundred kilograms. Its habit of digging deep burrows to escape the region's brutal heat has led researchers to flag it as a possible ecosystem engineer, a species whose physical behaviour can meaningfully alter the environment around it. At the same time, this same tortoise is now listed as Endangered, raising a genuine concern about losing a species that may be more ecologically important than it first appears.
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