Turtles and tortoises

Turtles vs tortoises- both are reptiles and belong to the family Chelonians, but in general turtles are water dwellers, and tortoises are land dwellers. Tortoises have a high, domed, hard upper shell (carapace) and are herbivores, while turtles have flatter carapaces and most are omnivores. They are both reptiles, but differ many ways. For example, tortoises live a very long life- 80-150 or more years, while turtles usually only live 20-40 years.



We have hosted both types of reptiles in our small swamp, with a snapping turtle, who ended up with the name Mr. Big, living here for almost 20 years. Mr. Big is a common snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina serpentina. A couple of years after he made himself at home, other snappers started showing up. Turns out he is quite the sexy guy, all the new additions were female. OK, how do I know? I started catching and releasing the overabundance of turtles back into the river, and all but Mr. Big had flat belly plates (plastron).  Males have concave belly plates. I checked him out too, that's how I know he is a Mr. In general, unless I drive pretty far away, the girls always came back (I could tell because of various scars they have on their shells from fighting). They must have amazing homing instincts or maybe Mr. Big was that sexy. The population seems to have settled down to Mr. Big, and 2-3 females, but at one point- there were at least 6 females (thus his name), a bit too many for our tiny swamp. The raccoons help with population control by digging up the nests and eating the eggs, otherwise our swamp would be crawling with snappers. As an odd aside, we have Taro plants (Colocasia esculenta) growing in some areas of the swamp, and the snappers just love to eat them. Curious, because Taro contains calcium oxalate, which is poisonous or at least very irritating to most animals when eaten raw. I have been able to lure Mr. Big out the water by holding out a Taro leaf- he really seems to relish them.
Mr. Big
 
One of his girlfriends




When I was a kid, it was common to see Gopher tortoises and Box Tortoises perambulating around the neighborhood.  My mom loved to see them in our yard because they liked to eat weeds rather than grass. But, with the advent of riding mowers, tortoises became fewer and sightings rare- and they usually have obvious injuries to their carapace after a run in with a riding mower. In the past 10 years, I have seen 2 Gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus) and 2 Florida Box tortoises ((Terrapene carolina bauri) in our neighborhood. Below are some photographs of both, the Gopher tortoise photographs were taken recently at the Golden Aster Nature preserve, and the Box Tortoise several years ago in our yard. One of the images shows the concave belly on the box turtle, and his lovely red eyes also helps identify him as a male.
The juvenile Gopher tortoises have brighter coloring, the scutes (the scale like things on their carapace) have yellow centers and their legs and belly are yellow as well, The adults are very drab in comparison.
Adult Gopher tortoise-

Juvenile-
 

Florida Box tortoise-
 

The concave belly plastron means this one is male.