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| The Painted Turtle is the turtle you most likely always see when you are on or near the water in the Algonquin Highlands. On a sunny day they tend to come out of hiding to bask in the sunlight. They will find anything they can that will enable them to get out of the water. More often than not there is well over one or two Painted Turtles on a log. At the slightest sign of danger though all the turtles will drop back into the water and disappear. Painted Turtles are named that for an obvious reason when seen up close. They have a green shell with yellow outlines. The trim of the shell has red detailing. Their head is spotted yellow and their legs are spotted with red. The plastron is bright yellow. They are a relatively small turtle, anywhere from 10-25 cm in length and live an average of 5-10 years in the wild. These turtles are found in ponds, bogs or weedy bays of large lakes with lots of places for sun bathing. The Painted Turtle can only swallow under water which means that their diet mostly consists of snails, tadpoles, fish, algae, duckweed and other aquatic vegetation. Mating among Painted Turtles is quite a process. Before mating takes place the male must try to get the female’s attention. Usually they will swim by a few times and then scratch the females chin with its long claws. Eggs are laid in June far from the water. The mother will find a soft spot of ground or urinate on harder spots and dig a small hole to lay her 5-8 eggs, then return to the water. The Painted Turtle hibernates for the winter but has been known to be active on occasion below the ice. As soon as Spring rolls around all it takes is 8ºC for these turtles become active. An interesting study on Painted Turtles shows that temperature, during the first half of incubation, can actually determine the sex of the turtles. In a controlled environment relatively cooler will always hatch male turtles whereas a warmer temperature will produce mostly females. In the wild temperatures are obviously not constant but it does show why even though Painted Turtles survive quite well in the cold, that they don’t tend to live in far North regions. This is because they don’t produce any females to continue the population with. |
(Family Testudinidae)
Chrysemys picta
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