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Project Noah Nature School
Trachemys scripta elegans
Red-eared sliders become melanistic with age, losing the red patches on the head and the striping on the legs. The shell becomes a uniform tan/brown and the scutes are all pretty much outlined with black.
Radnor Lake state park, Tennessee.
goody,
I took a picture of a tail for reference
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/923...
Picture number 2.
Sorry... but it IS a cool phenomenon! And now you can share the tidbit with others. It's one of the easiest and neatest things I can quickly point out to people while walking around the zoo. Everybody knows the "red-eared turtles" but they usually don't know that old males change their look.
Karen, I've been meaning to upload a spotting of this, as I frequent some ponds near me that have a lot of old male sliders. They become melanistic with age, losing the red patches on the head and the striping on the legs. The shell does exactly what you see in your photos - it becomes a uniform tan/brown and the scutes are all pretty much outlined with black.
Depending on common names being different in different countries they could actually be Tortoises! Turtles have flippers for swimming, as they liver in water permanently and only the females come ashore to lay eggs. Tortoises have "elephant-like" feet with bird -like claws such as this one as they live mainly on the land, and Terrapins have webs between the claws as they spend a lot of their time in water but also spend time on land. This applies in British terminology but other countries use different terminology and here in Spain they are all called Tortuga! So take your pick!
Spotted on Mar 6, 2012
Submitted on Mar 6, 2012
+1
