The Hard-To-Spot Turtles

The spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata) is a rare find in New York’s Adirondack region, so when we received one into our wildlife rehabilitation program in 2019, we were surprised. We went to work to save Spot, who luckily was not injured too badly by the car that hit her and was released in the late summer.

spotted turtle with taped injury

Our spotted turtle patient, Spot, healed from a vehicle strike and was released in 2019.

Spotted turtles are small freshwater turtles with yellow or cream spots on their black skin and shells. The pattern and number of spots change as these turtles age. Adult spotted turtles are 3.5 to 5.0 inches (9 to 12.7 cm) long.

Spotted turtles prefer small bodies or still water and live in marshy meadows, bogs, swamps, ponds, and even roadside ditches. Their coloring provides good camouflage in marsh vegetation. Unfortunately, these habitats have been disappearing and, as a result, spotted turtles are declining in numbers.

Spotted turtles are sensitive to pollution, toxicants, and poor water quality. Poaching for the pet trade is also responsible for significant loss of spotted turtles in the wild. Spotted turtles are considered a species of special concern in New York, and they have been protected in neighboring states Vermont and Massachusetts.

Small turtles that blend in are hard to spot on the road, putting spotted turtles at high risk for vehicle strikes during nesting season. Because turtles crossing roads are likely gravid female turtles in search of a nesting site and the reproductive rates of spotted turtles are low, deaths from vehicle strikes can be very detrimental for these at-risk turtle populations.

Find out more about spotted turtles and New York’s other turtle species in our Totally Turtles educational outreach program. If you are in northeastern New York and would like to bring a program to your school, library, club, or scout troop, please contact us.

Wonderful Wood Turtles

Wood turtles (Glyptemys insculpta) are a freshwater turtle species you might find in northeastern New York, but they have some unique characteristics. Wood turtles are found along the east coast of North America, from Nova Scotia in Canada to Virginia in the United States, and as far west as Minnesota, in and around flowing water in forests and woods.

wood turtle resting on top of a half log in a plastic tub

Our overwintering wood turtle patient likes to sun herself on top of her log hide for part of the day.

The wood turtle’s carapace, or upper shell, is rough with ridges in pyramid shapes. The ridges resemble tree rings, and the carapace is usually a dark mahogany color. The wood turtle’s neck and legs are splashed with orange, which creates a striking appearance.

Wood turtles are omnivorous and are the only freshwater turtle in the Adirondacks that can eat out of water. They eat beetles and other insects, slugs, and worms, and dine on some mushrooms, mosses, and grasses. They may also pick at carrion.

In New York, wood turtle numbers are declining, and they are considered a species of special concern. We do see some wood turtles in our wildlife rehabilitation program. We are currently overwintering a wood turtle who was hit by a car late last summer. We treated her for both a shell fracture and eye injuries. Because of they are more terrestrial and have different dietary requirements, we had to house the wood turtle differently than our fully aquatic patients.

We share information about wood turtles and the other turtles of northeastern New York in our educational outreach programs. We are looking for additional schools, libraries, clubs, and nature centers to host our programs. If you can recommend a place, please contact us.

Adirondack Wetlands

In an earlier post you learned about what wetlands are and why they are important. The Adirondack Park has marshes, peatlands, and swamps you can explore.

marsh

This marsh, which surrounds a pond, was the release site for a turtle hit by a car nearby.

Marshes are the deepest – up to six feet – and are the most biodiverse of the Adirondack wetlands. Marshes are found around ponds and lakes and along the slow-moving backwaters of rivers. Plants such as grasses, reeds, rushes, water lilies, and loosestrifes grow well in the nutrient-rich soil. Deer may be spotted along the edges of marshes and otters may be seen playing in the water, but there is an abundance of other life too. Turtles and frogs inhabit marshes. Many kinds of are found in marshes, too, including red-winged blackbirds and herons.

In peatlands, conditions are too cold and wet for plants to decompose; instead, they accumulate as peat soil. There are two types of peatlands in the Adirondacks: bogs and fens. Bogs are isolated from other water sources and are, therefore, dependent on rain. The peat in bogs tends to be acidic and nutrient poor. There are some plants that are happy in bogs, though, such as Tamaracks, Black Spruce, and Bog Laurel. Some orchids thrive there, as do pitcher plants and sundews, who have evolved to eat insects. And there are plenty of insects in bogs which bring in the birds, such as warblers and cedar waxwings, especially when they are feeding young. Some Adirondack bogs are over one thousand acres in size.

The other peatland you might find in the Adirondacks is a fen. Fens also have peat soil but get water from the surrounding watershed and are less acidic. Fens host a greater variety of plants than bogs. Wood frogs are often seen in and around fens.

The final Adirondack wetland is the swamp. Swamps are dominated by conifers and shrubs and are seldom more than a few inches deep. Because they are shady, plants like ferns and mosses are happy, as well as some shade-hardy wildflowers.

Interested in learning more about our Adirondack wetlands? Check out our Wild Wetlands educational outreach program. We would love to bring Wild Wetlands or one of our other programs to your school, library, or club. Contact us to find out how.

What is a Wetland?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies wetlands as areas where water either covers the soil or is present at or near the surface of the soil for at least part of the year. The water is often groundwater from an aquifer or spring. A wetland may also be filled by water from a nearby river or lake or, in coastal areas, by the ocean tides. Basically, wetlands are wet places.

painted turrle among plants in water

This painted turtle was rehabbed and released to her wetland habitat in 2021.

While some wetlands are permanently under water, others may flood seasonally. The depth and duration of this seasonal flooding varies. What is important is that, in each wetland, the presence of water determines the biological, physical, and chemical characteristics of the land and creates a distinct ecosystem.

Plants that live in wetlands are uniquely adapted to watery soil and vary from mosses and grasses to trees. A wide variety of animal species live in wetlands, too. Birds that frequent wetlands for protection and food include ducks, geese, kingfishers, and sandpipers. Mammals like otters and beavers rely on wetlands for food and shelter. Wetlands are home to many types of fish and – our favorites – reptiles and amphibians such as frogs, salamanders, snakes, and turtles.

Wetlands exist in many climates and are found on every continent except Antarctica, both along coasts and inland. The largest wetlands in the world include the Amazon River Basin in South America and the Hudson Bay Lowland in Canada. The world’s largest protected wetland, Llanos de Moxos in Bolivia, is more than 17 million acres, about equal in size to North Dakota.

Wetlands take many forms including rivers, marshes, bogs, mangroves, mudflats, ponds, swamps, billabongs, peatlands, sloughs, muskegs, fens, lagoons, potholes, mires, and floodplains. Most large wetland areas include a combination of different forms. Swamps, marshes, and bogs are the three major kinds of wetlands.

Wetlands are essential ecosystems. In addition to providing homes for many plant and animal species, they are giant sponges that limit the effects of flooding from heavy rain. Coastal wetlands absorb storm surges to protect fragile beaches and shore communities. As storms worsen due to climate change, wetlands may save us all.

Interested in learning more about wetlands? Check out our Wild Wetlands educational outreach program. We would love to bring Wild Wetlands or one of our other programs to your school, library, or club. Contact us to find out how.

Sink or Swim

If you have been lucky enough to watch a turtle in a glass aquarium, you saw that turtles are strong swimmers, but sometimes they just hang out on the bottom. For you to do that, at the bottom of a pool, for instance, you would need two things: a way to breathe and something heavy to keep you down there. How does a turtle stay under, perhaps even napping?

painted turtle in aquarium floating just below the surface

Educational ambassador Diane demonstrates how turtles can float just below the surface.

In our last post about turtle physiology, we noted that, because of the shell, turtles have significantly more bone mass than other animals. That heavy bone sinks like a rock. But turtles can also float, so something must be making them buoyant.

We have seen turtles described as little submarines. That is a pretty accurate comparison. Turtles sink or swim like submarines dive or surface except, instead of ballast tanks, a turtle has a bladder.

To counteract the weight of their shells and float, turtles pump air into their large lungs. To submerge, they draw water into the urinary bladder through the cloaca. How deep a turtle stays depends on the ratio of air in the lungs to water in the bladder. There are variations in this depending on the species of turtle, but that is the general idea.

Having all that air in their lungs, plus slow metabolism, means a turtle can hold their breath a long time. Under normal summer conditions, it might be an hour before a turtle comes up for air. Napping, the turtle might stay even longer. And if the oxygen in the lungs gets used up before the turtle surfaces, they will switch to anaerobic metabolism and not need any oxygen at all. But that is a story for another time.

You can learn more about how turtles sink or swim in our educational outreach programs. We are always looking for new program hosts. Please contact us to bring a program to your school, library, or club meeting.

Save the Snakes

Snakes get a bad rap. Just the way snakes move freaks some folks out, not to mention the venom. When you get to know a bit more about them, though, you might understand why we think snakes are worth saving.

According to the CDC, between 7,000 and 8,000 humans are bit by venomous snakes in the United States each year, and around five of those will die. For perspective, though, 49 people die, on average, from lightning strikes. Unlike lightning, which does not care, snakes would rather not bite you, because that rarely ends well for the snake. Instead, snakes will go out of their way to get out of your way and go about the business of catching prey, which is what that venom is really for.

snake skeleton

Image by Denis Doukhan from Pixabay

The name “snake” comes from an Old English word, “snaca,” which means “to crawl or to creep.” They do not actually creep, though. Snakes slither, which is the serpentine motion you often see. They also “walk” on their belly scales to move slowly straight ahead, or bunch up then stretch forward like an accordion. While they have no actual legs, their ancestors did. Many snakes still have what remains of the pelvic and leg bones in there.

Going legless could not have been a bad idea, since some lizards decided to do it, too. Wait! Isn’t a legless lizard just another snake? Nope, and if you are not sure, have a staring contest. If they blink, they are a lizard. Snakes have no eyelids. Instead, their eyes are covered with a transparent scale for protection. The scale will shed along with the rest of the snake’s skin.

While shedding is common in the reptile world, the way snakes slide out of their skins and leave them behind in one piece is unique. The process is so mysterious and wonderful that humans have symbolically associated it with growth and transformation. The poor snakes must go around being spiritually significant, as if being nature’s rodent control service was not burden enough.

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

Rats, mice, and other small mammals make up a good portion of a snake’s diet. In keeping the rodent population controlled, snakes also reduce the number of ticks which carry Lyme and other diseases. Whenever we get a call about a snake hanging around where they are not wanted, the first thing we ask is, “What is the snake eating?” Chances are good there is something there attracting mice. The snake is doing pest management for you and will not even send you a bill.

While we specialize in turtles, our door is open to any injured reptiles in need of care. We think snakes are fascinating and recognize how important they are to the ecosystems they occupy. We will keep learning and working hard to save the snakes.

It’s All About the Shell

What makes a turtle a turtle? There are a few other things that differentiate turtles from their reptile relatives, but, really, it’s all about the shell.

A turtle’s shell is made up of expanded ribs that have fused together into bone plates. The ribs give the shell its shape and are fused into the bone of the carapace, or top shell. The carapace is a kind of bone called dermal bone because it is derived from the skin. It is not odd to have dermal bone; the human skull is also dermal bone. Turtles just have an exceptionally large amount of dermal bone. Bone mass makes up almost 40% of a turtle’s weight, compared to less than 15% for some crocodiles, a turtle’s closest cousins.

painted turtle in tub of water with strips of tape holding shell cracks togetherThe shell provides protection for the turtle’s heart, lungs, and other organs which is much better than that offered by your ribcage. By retracting their heads and limbs into their shells, turtles can protect those, too. The box turtle’s hinged plastron, or bottom shell, allows the shell to close completely.

The shell is not like a suit of armor over the turtle but, rather, a living part of the turtle. The turtle’s shell has nerves and blood vessels, and it grows and heals like any other broken bone. It can heal so well, in fact, that for many cracks we only need to realign the pieces and hold them in place until the turtle’s body takes care of the rest.

Unfortunately, there are instructions on the internet for repairing a turtle’s shell with glue or epoxy. Do not glue a turtle’s shell back together! If glue gets between the pieces of shell, they will not be able to heal back together. Without restored blood flow, some pieces of the shell may die. Please contact a veterinarian or wildlife rehabilitator if you find a turtle with a broken shell.

You can learn more about turtle shells and see the shells of our educational ambassadors up close in our educational outreach programs.

No Breathing Necessary

Take a deep breath in and hold it. Keep holding it. How long can you go without breathing?

Humans, and most other vertebrates, can survive only a few minutes without oxygen. Turtles need to breathe air just like us but, thanks to unique and remarkable physiology, they can hold their breath a really, really long time. It is this amazing adaptation that allowed freshwater turtles to spread into colder places where winter temperatures are regularly below freezing.

snapping turtle balanced on log above water basking

Image by simardfrancois from Pixabay

During the summer here in northeastern New York, turtles are likely to be spotted basking on logs or rocks under the hot sun. During the winter, they are never seen unless someone is lucky enough to spot the outline of a buried turtle through clear ice. Once the water cools in autumn, the turtles head to the bottom of lakes and ponds, dig down into the muddy bottom, and slow down.

Turtles do not hibernate. During hibernation a mammal curls up and sleeps to lower their metabolism a bit. Turtles remain conscious but depress their metabolism so much that their hearts beat only once in five minutes! Oxygen is used very slowly. As a result, turtles can, in fact, hold their breath for months, a really, really long time.

If a submerged turtle needs to breath before the ice above them melts, they employ another distinctive aspect of their physiology and absorb oxygen out of the water through their skin. The skin usually used is that of the cloaca, the opening at the rear of the turtle through which the turtle urinates, defecates, and lays eggs. Cloacal oxygen absorption has been given a fun name by turtle enthusiasts: butt breathing.

Turtles survive underwater during winters in cold climates by slowing their metabolism and, when needed, absorbing oxygen through their butts. No breathing is necessary, at least not for a long while.

Butt breathing is just one of the fascinating facts about turtle anatomy and physiology we share in our educational outreach programs.

Rescuing Anoles

We get a call or two every year about an anole found here in northeastern New York. Green anoles (Anolis carolinensis) are native to the Southeast and brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) are native to Cuba and the Bahamas, although they have invaded the same range as green anoles and are now widely found there. The same trait that brought brown anoles to the United States brings many into the cold north – they are notorious hitchhikers.

young brown anole sitting among vines

Our current rescue anole, Scatha, arrived in October 2021 as a young juvenile.

Anoles are small, fast, and live in plants, especially if those plants have bugs. Anoles eat small insects like flies, spiders, crickets, and moths, all found on plants. They often find their way into greenhouses where potted plants are grown for retail sales all over the country and end up being shipped out along with the plants. Even the littlest reptiles can survive some exposure to cold by going into a torpor state, and an anole might seem dead until they warm up and surprise an unsuspecting plant purchaser.

Being only five to seven inches long, tiny anoles are not suitable for handling, especially by children, but they are fairly easy to care for and can be a good introductory reptile pet. Anoles can thrive in a small glass tank with a good substrate and lots of plants to climb on, either live or artificial. The biggest challenge is maintaining a sufficient humidity level, which can be achieved with a spray bottle if used daily.

Our current anole rescue, Scatha, was a very young hatchling when she was found, so we suspect she may have journeyed north as an egg laid in potting soil. If you find an anole in the North Country, please do not release it outside, even in summer, as it will not survive long here. Contact us for rescue help, or for advice on setting up a good habitat for your new anole pet.

The Earliest Turtles

Thanks to good fossil records, we know that turtles are some of the oldest vertebrates on Earth. They made their appearance during the late Triassic period, about 250 million years ago. They are part of the reptile family that includes crocodilians (alligators and crocodiles), who are their closest relatives, the dinosaurs, who they lived alongside, and birds.

You read that correctly. Current studies show that genetically, birds are most closely related to crocodiles, turtles, and dinosaurs. But you have always suspected your Mr. Tweetie was hiding something, haven’t you?

fossil turtle skeleton head neck front of shell front legs

Image by Icewall42 from Pixabay

You might look at sea turtles and assume turtles have always been aquatic, but the earliest turtles lived on land. At first, they had expanded ribs, not the fully formed shell we associate with turtles today. The early turtles include:

  • Eunotosaurus africanus, 260 million years ago. Eunotosaurus looked like a modern-day lizard but had wide, flat ribs that rounded the torso into the shape of a turtle shell. Eunotosaurus fossils were found in southern Africa.
  • Pappochelys rosinae, 240 million years ago. Found in Germany, the fossils are like Eunotosaurus with wide, flat ribs.
  • Odontochelys semitestacea, 220 million years ago. Until Eunotosaurus and Pappochelys were discovered, Odontochelys, whose fossil was found in China, was thought to be the original turtle. While still lacking the carapace (upper shell), Odontochelys had a fully formed plastron (lower shell) and are believed to have spent at least part of the time in shallow water, the earliest evidence of turtles becoming aquatic.
  • Proganochelys quenstedti, 220 million years ago. Fossils indicate Proganochelys was the first “true turtle,” in that it had a fully formed carapace as well as a plastron. Proganochelys was believed to be only semi-aquatic and an herbivore, so more like a tortoise than today’s aquatic turtles. The shell of Proganochelys was about three feet long and it had a long tail, reminiscent of snapping turtles.
  • Meiolania, 20 million years ago. There are three distinct species in the genus Meiolania, and these are almost present-day tortoises, except for their horns and clubbed tails. They are the largest tortoises that have ever existed, with a carapace length over six feet. Most Meiolania fossils have been found in Australia and nearby South Pacific islands. Unfortunately, there is evidence Meiolania disappeared shortly after the arrival of humans, which may make them one of the first instances of human-caused extinction.
  • Stupendemys, 10 million years ago. Fossils found in South America tell us Stupendemys had a carapace exceeding six feet in length, and sometimes as long as ten feet, making it the largest freshwater turtle ever to have existed.
  • Hesperotestudo, 2 million years ago. Fossils of these giant tortoises are found mainly in North America and are like present-day gopher tortoises. Hesperotestudo existed alongside humans who hunted them for food, which most likely led to their extinction.

In the 250 million years that turtles have been on Earth, they have never been in as much danger of extinction as they are today. We hope that as you learn more about ancient turtles, you will also learn how to help turtles today.

Dancing Turtle’s education programs include fascinating facts about the earliest turtles to inspire conservation.