Reptiles
Eastern Box Turtle
Terrapene carolina · also called land turtle, box tortoise
The eastern box turtle is the turtle you meet in the woods, not the water — a small, high-domed, brightly marked animal that, when alarmed, folds its shell shut around itself like a suitcase. It may also be older than you are.
Overview
Terrapene carolina lives across the eastern United States, in moist woodland and forest edges. It is a land turtle in the pond-turtle family — a pond turtle that moved ashore. A hinge across the lower shell lets it seal head, legs, and tail completely inside, a trick few turtles can do.
A long, local life
Box turtles commonly live 40–60 years, some past 100. Each adult keeps to one home range of a few hectares for its entire life, navigating from memory. A turtle moved away will try to walk home and often dies trying — which is why you should never relocate one except off a road, in the direction it was heading.
Odd facts
It can eat mushrooms poisonous to humans unharmed. Its sex is set by nest temperature. It survives winter buried in leaf litter and can tolerate brief partial freezing.
Status
The eastern box turtle is Vulnerable and declining, worn down by roads, habitat loss, and collection, with too few hatchlings surviving to replace the losses.
Eastern Box Turtle: common questions
Is a box turtle a tortoise?
Not in the strict sense. Tortoises are a specific family, the Testudinidae, of dry-land turtles with stumpy elephantine feet. The box turtle belongs to the Emydidae, the pond and marsh turtle family, and is essentially a pond turtle that has moved onto land. It has slightly webbed toes, it soaks in shallow water and mud, and its young are more aquatic than the adults. But because it lives on land, has a high domed shell, and looks the part, it is very often called a box tortoise, and the name is not wrong in everyday use.
Why should you not move a box turtle you find?
Because an adult box turtle spends its whole life within one small, familiar home range that it knows in detail, and it has a powerful drive to stay in or return to it. A turtle relocated even a few kilometres away will typically set off in the direction of home and keep going, crossing roads and unfamiliar ground, and many die of exhaustion, dehydration, predation, or traffic before they get there, if they ever do. The only time to move one is to carry it off a road, and then only to the far side in the exact direction it was already heading.
How can you tell a male from a female?
The most reliable clues are the eyes and the shell. Adult males usually have bright red or orange eyes, while females' eyes are yellowish-brown or dark. Males also tend to have a shallow concave dip in the underside of the shell, which helps them balance during mating, whereas the female's underside is flat. Males often have thicker, longer tails and more strongly curved hind claws. None of these is absolute, and young turtles cannot be sexed, but an adult with red eyes and a dished plastron is almost always male.
Do eastern box turtles make good pets?
They are demanding, long-lived, and increasingly protected, so they are not a casual pet. A box turtle needs a large outdoor enclosure for much of the year with sun, shade, soil to dig in, and a place to overwinter, plus a varied omnivorous diet and veterinary care for a lifespan that can exceed the keeper's. Wild-caught turtles often carry parasites and adjust poorly to captivity, and taking one from the wild removes a slow-breeding adult that the local population depends on. Many states now prohibit or restrict keeping them. A captive-bred animal, where legal, is the only responsible option.