Baby Snapping Turtles

JAMESTOWN, N.D. -- Earlier this summer, Betty Kratzke noticed that something was disturbing the ground near the flowers that line her driveway. Solving the mystery this week proved to be a snap - when baby snapping turtles started crawling around her yard. "They just keep popping up out of the hole," said Cliff Hanson, Kratzke's brother-in-law. The turtles had recently hatched and were no bigger than a half dollar coin, said Darrell Perry, another brother-in-law. Family members scooped up 44 turtles in all. They were put in a cardboard box and taken to the nearby James River. "They went swimming away like crazy," Kratzke said.
Snapping turtles live to be decades old and can grow up to 40 pounds, said Gene Van Eeckhout, a biologist with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department. They do not make nice pets, he said. "They're not very friendly to play with," Van Eeckhout said. Kratzke said she thought some sort of animal was disturbing her flowers. "But it was a long ways from being a muskrat or a raccoon," she said. "They are the cutest little things." Perry said the experience was one to remember. "While they were coming out, we just stood there and watched them in amazement," he said.

Observation: Those snapping turtles are sold for $25.-$30. each at the local pet store. I would love to have one. I had one a while back but it died after a couple of years. Turtles need a lot of attention to their water filtration, nutrition, and sunlight or UV lighting. It takes a lot of commitment and responsibility.

Rare Turtle Born in Tennessee

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — The newest addition to the Tennessee Aquarium is a recently hatched rare turtle of an endangered species displayed in only a few places in North America. A rare Beal's four-eyed turtle, named for two white spots on the back of its head that look like another pair of eyes, hatched from a clutch of three eggs, aquarium officials announced Friday. "This little turtle in Chattanooga may represent the first successful reproduction of Sacalia bealei in a North American institution," aquarium herpetologist Enrico Walder said. The baby turtle weighed only 6 grams and was 38 millimeters long when it hatched June 9. There are only 18 known Beal's four-eyed turtles in the United States and Europe. The Dallas Zoo and the Charles Paddock Zoo in Atascadero, Calif., are the other two places in the U.S. with the turtles, aquarium officials said.

The turtles were once common in southern China, butd researchers believe their numbers will not grow large again because of their low reproductive rates. "As with many Asian species the Beal's four-eyed turtle has been over collected for use in the Chinese food and traditional medicine trade," Walder said. A male Beal's four-eyed turtle is currently on display at the aquarium, but the baby will not be exhibited until it is older.

Texas Yellow Mud Turtle

This is my Texas Yellow Mud Turtle. It is about four inches long. It is a pretty neat little turtle. I have it in the ten gallon tank which has tropical fish also. The small mud turtles do not seem to be very fast when it comes to hunting fish, so the tropical fish seem to mostly survive in the tank. I have a variety of fish. Glass shrimp, neons, mollies, guppies, zebra danios, a red-tail barb, and I had a catfish but it looks like it was eaten by the turtles.

The Texas Mud Turtle has a sort of mustard color. It is named a Yellow Mud Turtle because the skin on its neck is sort of yellowish. It is different from the standard Mud Turtles that I have gotten in the past.

It also seems to be more shy and thoughtful. That may sound silly, but this turtle will look around and turn her head at things. The little turtle seems to be thinking about what to do. Too bad turtles can't talk, it would be interesting to hear what it is thinking about.

She has a very short tail, so she is a female turtle. My child has named all the turtles but I don't remember this one's name. This little turtle also seems to enjoy looking at its own reflection in the glass of the aquarium. When I see the turtle doing that, it reminds me of that song by Siouxie and the Banshees (Through the Looking Glass). The larger turtles in the other aquarium are used to looking through the glass. They can see me when I walk by, and they start sticking their heads out of the water and paddling when they want food. I guess it must be weird to be a turtle in an aquarium looking out at people walking by.

Musk Turtle is growing

The Musk turtle is getting bigger. Now that this one and the Texas Mud turtle are in their own tank, I think they will do better. The larger turtles in the other tank have a tendency to nip at the smaller turtles.

Map Turtle hunts goldfish

Here is Coconut the Map Turtle catching another goldfish. One of the perils of keeping turtles in an aquarium is that when they manage to climb out they fall on the floor and sometimes their shells get dinged or even cracked. Coconut has a ding on one of its front shell plates. I guess that is why many people that have turtles keep the water level low. However, I prefer to see them have as much space as possible to swim around in, so I keep the water near the top of the aquarium.

Here is my Map Turtle catching a goldfish. This turtle is named Coconut. I am not sure if it is a boy or a girl. The tail is pretty big, and that usually indicates it is a male. On the other hand, males usually have a slightly longer tail. This turtle is less than three years old. We got Coconut when it was a baby turtle at the Snakes reptile store.


Coconut the Map Turtle snacking on a goldfish a couple of days ago. The love the feeder fish.

Yellow Belly Turtle

This is one of the two Yellow Bellied Turtles that I have right now in a twenty gallon long tank. They are pretty friendly and are hand-fed, except when I put the feeder-fish into the aquarium. They love swimming around snapping up those goldfish!

Florida Box Turtle

I had a few box turtles in the 1980s. I tried leaving them out in the yard and they invariably would dig a whole under the fence and leave. I recovered a couple, but I wonder where the rest of them went. I hope they did OK. Keeping box turtles in a cat litter box was the other alternative. There were some large plastic contatiners that were bigger than a standard aquarium and easier to clean out because they are lighter. The box turtles never seemed very happy.

Most aquatic turtles seem more sociable and happy in a clean aquarium, and they respond to me when they imagine that they are going to be fed. My box turtles on the other hand never warmed up to me. I let them have the run of the yard, so perhaps they were just not getting enough human contact? I have always liked them a lot. They are cool to watch walking around. Some day it would be nice to have some land and build a turtle habitat.

Update: 04/16/07: Faizal recently posted a link to these cool photos of his Star Tortoise being born. The photos are very amazing, I am glad to have seen them!

Musk Turtle

Musk Turtles are climbers! This little turtle climbed out of its aquatic habitat and then went climbing up the chicken wire. The balcony was on a second floor, so the turtle was lucky it did not go the other way and fall down to the pavement. This photo is from around 1979.

Map Turtle

I have a Map Turtle that was purchased as a small baby (for educational purposes) and is now about five inches long. The serrated scales on the side of the shell are pretty cool. The Turtle also has a highly detailed skin featuring yellow stripes on her dark green skin. After the Mud Turtle died, we wanted to get another friend for the little red-ear slider. Small Mud & Musk Turtles are rarely available in the average Reptile store, and especially in the Fall months. So we found a baby Map Turtle, and he is getting along fine with the baby Red-Ear and the small Musk Turtle. One big happy family. That is a great thing about turtles. They usually get along very well, and they seem to live in harmony except when they are trying to get the same piece of food. They climb on each other to bask in the sunlight, and they do not seem to have any major hang-ups!

Little Snapping Turtle & Slider

These two eventually got pretty big back in the 1990s

Little Red Eared Slider

We visited a local reptile pet store as we often do to look at the many interesting critters. I guess it is called window shopping. The usual suspects were there, incarcerated in their terrariums and aquariums, and some were in little plastic trays. The feeder rats, mice, pinkies, and bloods had just been delivered. You could see the big rats red eyes were looking for a way out as they scrambled around in their delivery crates.

Spotted a batch of small red-eared sliders. These guys were very young and full of pep. The red-eared sliders were $5. each, the snapping turtles were $25. and the soft-shell, map turtles, and painted turtles were $20. each. Three of the turtles in our aquarium were now getting close to five inches long and they were purchased as little babies originally (for educational purposes).

Picked a very energetic little fellow. He/she is doing great so far, getting lots of sun and artificial lighting at the basking places in a long twenty gallon aquarium. Reptile aquariums are horizontally longer and vertically shorter.

Baby Snapping Turtles

Baby Turtles are harder to keep healthy.

Death of a baby Mud Turtle

I was very fortunate to find a pet store that had a baby Mud Turtle in the summer of 2003. It was purely an accident. As often happens when you are not looking for something is when you find it. Mud and Musk Turtles are not kept at most pet stores because I believe that they are harder to care for and also less colorful. The brownish or black shells of the Mud and Musk Turtles probably make them less attractive than the colorful Sliders, Painted Turtles, and similar breeds. So I was knocked out when I saw this small rectangular light brown little turtle. I immediately called for a staff member to bag the turtle, as if there were suddenly going to be a rush of interested buyers. The little gal (very short tail) was kind of shy, always hiding under the various aquarium ornaments. But she thrived.

She gradually got bigger, and then we moved to a new home, and after the move the aquarium was set-up again. A few days later the little Mud Turtle was gone. I looked all over the aquarium and turned over the various bridges and artificial rock formations. No turtle. I thought maybe he had somehow climbed out. I searched around the house and under the furniture. No Turtle. After another day, I decided to take out every piece of aquarium furniture (ornaments, rocks, bridges) and check it. These plastic resin bridges and rock formations are hollow-molded so they are lighter and cheaper to produce. Most of them have holes in the bottom at their base. I pulled out each piece, let the water drip out, and then checked the hole in the base. When I got to the rock formation, it was too dark to see all the way in, but when I shook it there was something wedged in there. Sadly, it was not a rock. I could not shake it loose, so I got a screwdriver and pulled the plastic resin rocks apart, and in the top layer of plastic rock formation was the little mud turtle. She was dead. Finding an innocent creature dead like that is grim. Drowning inside the hollow of a plastic resin rock formation has to be harsh by any standard.

Apparently she tried to climb all the way up from the inside of the rock formation and she got wedged in. Why had she done this? I am guessing that the stress from the move made the normally shy mud turtle more anxious and nervous, and perhaps when she pushed the rock base up and found the dark hollow, she just wanted to crawl far away from the chaos in the newly set-up tank. Who knows? Anyhow, it was a hard lesson to learn, but I have pulled out anything that has a hollow base which any small turtle can possibly crawl into.

Mud Turtles

Right now I have one small Mud Turtle, two Musk turtles, a red-eared slider, two yellow-bellies and a map turtle. I got the Mud turtle when she was just a few months old and about an inch long. Now she is about two inches long, and she is about two years old. The turtles are presently in a twenty gallon reptile aquarium (long tank) filled almost to the top with water. I have a Tetris 1 water filter. The turtles have a couple of areas where they can bask in the sun and/or lamplight. Even though lamp light is not the same as the sun, it seems to have a positive effect on the turtles' health.

The Red-Eared Slider, one of the Yellow-Bellies, and the Map turtles are about four inches long, and their shells are thick, hard, and wide. One of the Yellow Belly turtles, and the Mud and Musk Turtles seem to be growing at a slower pace. I feed the turtles a variety of foods like Reptomin, Tetramin, Goldfish Crumbles, moist Turtle Treats, and three other jars of hard Turtle food. The turtles are great eaters, and the little Mud Turtle and the two Musk Turtles always seem to be eating too, but they just seem to grow slower. Turtles get to know the people who are regularly feeding them, and they react when any of us walk by since we are the only ones who feed them. They get very excited and swim to the top, and look for food sticks. They like to be fed by hand.

This aquarium also has guppies, Neons, Tetras, Mollies and I just added some glass shrimp. Unfortunately, it seems like the turtles are snacking on the shrimp so there may not be too many of them left. Aquariums are a lot of fun to maintain once you get one set up and the water is settled and clear. An aquarium with turtles is even more interesting, as turtles have a lot more personality than fish! However, turtles demand more care than fish, and they are more difficult to keep healthy.