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Project Noah Nature School
Trachemys scripta
8 inch long turtle with a yellow shell, no red ears. Several of these swam among other turtles. They turn out to be sliders who are aging and whose skin is darkening and showing signs of melanism to the point where they normal yellow stripes on their necks are no longer visible. The light shell is simply sun-bleached.
Fresh water canal in western Boca Raton, FL
Spotted on Aug 5, 2015
Submitted on Aug 5, 2015
5 Comments
I can't find any good links to send you, but if you just Google "melanistic slider", a lot of images will pop up that looks just like your guy
Thanks. I was thinking of the shell rather than the body color. That explains a lot. I have 3 turtles that are all dark-skinned in the canal. Two have light yellow shells and one's is just starting to go yellow but all are missing the yellow stripes on their necks. I couldn't figure out what they were.
No, I meant melanistic. His skin is almost completely black with a slight mottled appearance to it, when a normal slider would have bright yellow stripes all over the arms and neck. The shell just gets somewhat bleached and turns that pale yellow color as they age. Pretty much every slider looks just like this when they get to be a certain age.
Hi Ashley. Thanks for the comment. I was wondering if you meant leucistic rather than melanistic which I thought meant dark in color. It is interesting that I saw two of them together. Do they turn lighter as they age rather than being born light in color?
Melanistic slider, Trachemys scripta. Melanism is extremely common in this species as they get older