A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
It had a rough kind of bumpy shell with a few cracks here and there. Thats all I could feel before he wanted to bite me.
around a pond at my grandmas house.
Spotted on May 19, 2014
Submitted on May 19, 2014
2 Comments
The ID on this one bothered me so much that I looked up an expert from East Texas Herpetological Society. He said that the turtle is a red slider, but an older male, and that these will sometimes produce more melanin, causing the yellow stripes to darken. They also grow longer claws to attract females!
Apparently this darkening effect of turtles is most common in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
Looks like a black river or pond slider... the red ears suggest red-eared slider, but it does not have the characteristic yellow stripes. Hmmm...