I came upon this turtle while walking around at Phinizy Swamp. It’s a box turtle, Terrapene carolina carolina. It turns out that, although the color patterns on the turtle’s shell are recognizable as belonging with its subspecies group, the details of the pattern are unique to the individual. It’s kind of like a fingerprint. A scientist can take a photo of this turtle’s shell pattern and identify this individual turtle again in the field later, without having attached a tag to the animal.
I came across this turtle in just the kind of place that a box turtle likes – between the swamp and the forest. Box turtles live in both locations. They eat just about anything they come across – small animals (insects, snails, worms), carrion (dead animals), plant parts, and more. Possibly young turtles are more carnivorous while they’re growing the most, and older turtles are more herbivorous. When threatened, box turtles draw their heads and limbs inside their shells – and this kind of turtle can even close its belly plate (called a plastron) up tight, completely sealing off all entrances to the shell. Larger predators find they can’t bite their way through the shell of a fully closed-up, mature box turtle.
It takes a box turtle 5 to 10 years to reach sexual maturity. A male box turtle will have a concave (indented) area on his plastron – this enables him to balance himself against and on top of a female’s shell while they are mating. A female turtle’s plastron is smooth in shape. Females can store fertilized eggs inside their bodies for several years before laying them. Males usually have reddish eyes, and females’ are brown. Box turtles can live for 100 years or more.
I came across this turtle in just the kind of place that a box turtle likes – between the swamp and the forest. Box turtles live in both locations. They eat just about anything they come across – small animals (insects, snails, worms), carrion (dead animals), plant parts, and more. Possibly young turtles are more carnivorous while they’re growing the most, and older turtles are more herbivorous. When threatened, box turtles draw their heads and limbs inside their shells – and this kind of turtle can even close its belly plate (called a plastron) up tight, completely sealing off all entrances to the shell. Larger predators find they can’t bite their way through the shell of a fully closed-up, mature box turtle.
It takes a box turtle 5 to 10 years to reach sexual maturity. A male box turtle will have a concave (indented) area on his plastron – this enables him to balance himself against and on top of a female’s shell while they are mating. A female turtle’s plastron is smooth in shape. Females can store fertilized eggs inside their bodies for several years before laying them. Males usually have reddish eyes, and females’ are brown. Box turtles can live for 100 years or more.
Box turtles have a homing instinct. Interestingly, not much seems to be known yet about how the homing instinct works. But if you pick up a box turtle and move it farther than maybe a quarter mile, it will probably search endlessly for its way home – and never find it. Sometimes people find a turtle and try to relocate it to another location in the wild, not realizing they are dooming it to a near certain death. It’s also a bad idea to take a wild turtle home as a pet. They are hard to care for, and they won’t be happy because they will keep wanting to return home.
If you find a box turtle that is crossing a busy road where it could easily get run over, you could help it out by taking it to the other side of the road – if it is really clear which direction it was trying to go. At the Phinizy Swamp, it’s best to just look at the turtle without touching it.
Box turtles reproduce themselves very slowly. Each female box turtle may end up having only 2 or 3 offspring who survive to adulthood. Although box turtles are very successful at defending themselves against would-be predators, their greatest current danger is from humans.
For more information on visiting the Phinizy Swamp, see the site for the Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy:
http://naturalsciencesacademy.org/
If you find a box turtle that is crossing a busy road where it could easily get run over, you could help it out by taking it to the other side of the road – if it is really clear which direction it was trying to go. At the Phinizy Swamp, it’s best to just look at the turtle without touching it.
Box turtles reproduce themselves very slowly. Each female box turtle may end up having only 2 or 3 offspring who survive to adulthood. Although box turtles are very successful at defending themselves against would-be predators, their greatest current danger is from humans.
For more information on visiting the Phinizy Swamp, see the site for the Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy:
http://naturalsciencesacademy.org/
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