The Painted Turtles

The Painted Turtles

The orange markings on a painted turtle are clearly visible on the
 legs of the turtle.

So far in our Herpetology project, we have found more painted turtles - three - than any other kind of turtle. Painted turtles are easily identifiable by the orange markings on their skin and shell, and their full protective bottom shell. Some turtles have only a partial bottom shell, but the painted turtle has a full one.

The full bottom shell of a painted turtle is clearly shown above.

Another, rather unfortunate, characteristic of painted turtles is that they have a tendency to release urine when they are scared (i.e., when we pick them up).
So far, we have found all of our painted turtles around our pitfall trap system. They can sometimes be hard to spot due to their tendency to blend in with their surroundings.

This is where we found out first painted turtle! It's in the center of the image.

This first turtle had a carapace length of 13 cm and a carapace width of 9.8 cm. We tried to weigh it, but it was too large for our scale! Our second painted turtle, found a few days later, had a carapace length of 15.3 cm. and a carapace width of 13.2 cm. Its mass was 392.8 grams.

Here's our second painted turtle trying to bite us!

Finally, the third painted turtle had a shell length of 13.6 cm., a width of 11 cm., and a mass of 377.4 grams. In addition to weighing and measuring the turtles, we also mark their shells so that we can identify them if we catch them again. We just file a couple of the little ridges that the turtle has on its shell.

A turtle is having its shell marked with a triangular file.

We've caught so many turtles, I hope we catch a snapping turtle next!

-Johnny