The Yangtze giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) is an extremely rare species of softshell turtle found in Vietnam and China. It is also known as the Red River giant softshell turtle, Shanghai softshell turtle, or Swinhoe's softshell turtle. In Chinese, it is known as the speckled softshell turtle (Chinese: 斑鱉; Pinyin: bān bīe). Only four living individuals are known and it is listed as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List. It is hoped that a pair at Suzhou Zoo in China will breed.
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Famous quotes containing the words yangtze, giant and/or turtle:
“In the Yangtze River waves push the waves ahead; so in life new people constantly replace the old ones.”
—Chinese proverb.
“In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
Of how life should be.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,—
All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)