Eastern mud turtle

Description:

I found a pair of eastern mud turtles today at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. They were on their way to a vernal pool. Mud turtles have a plain dark carapace (upper shell) and a yellow and brown plastron (bottom shell). The plastron has two hinges, which allows the turtles to close up their shell when threatened. But as you can see here, it does not completely protect them since they can't close it as tightly as a box turtle. This is a fully grown adult - they grow to be about 4 inches long. These little guys can live for 50 years and this particular one is probably over 10 years old since the annuli (rings) on the plastron have started to wear smooth.