Wood Turtle
Wood Turtle
Clemmys insculpta
The name "wood" suits this medium-sized turtle. Each roundish segment of its six to eight-inch shell looks like a woodgrained cross-section of a branch, complete with growth rings and yellow rays radiating from protruding blackflecked centers.
When the shell is dry, the grooves take on a spider web pattern. A noticeable midrib or keel runs front to back. The bottom shell is yellow with each segment blotched black along its side. A black, blunt head and brown limbs are highlighted red or yellow on throat and soft connecting flesh. Males have long, thick tails with. Females have smaller tails. The Wood Turtle is semi-aquatic, living along forested rivers and streams. Water pollution, irrigation, and forest erosion have effected its habitat.
Active by day, April to November, Wood Turtles are omnivorous and consume insects, mussels, carrion, berries, dandelions and other succulent herbs. In late fall, Wood Turtles inhabit stream banks and hibernate over winter in large community burrows.
Wood Turtles were once found throughout Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota, except in the southwestern-most portion. Today, small scattered populations exist in isolated habitat. This turtle's original North American range extended from Nova Scotia to eastern Minnesota, south to northeastern Iowa, east to Virginia and north to New York. It is now threatened or endangered in much of this range.
In Wisconsin, Wood Turtles live mainly along the Black, Wisconsin, St. Croix, Brule and Baraboo Rivers. When summer arrives, they forage in deciduous forests and open meadows adjacent to these rivers. Turtle experts now believe that Wood Turtles may be less terrestrial than originally believed; some may inhabit rivers year round.
Like ornate box turtles, Wood turtles mature late and live as long as 58 years. They mate in spring and fall, in or out of water. Females dig nests in June on communal gravel sites along banks or railroad beds. But the nests don't always survive. Egg predation by skunks, raccoons and opossums is becoming a serious problem due to an increase in the number of these scavengers since human settlement. If the nest makes it through, a clutch of 4 to 17 white, smooth eggs laid in June will hatch in September. Gray hatchlings look awkward with tiny bodies and oversized tails.
Before Wood Turtles were placed on Wisconsin's endangered species list in 1974, hundreds were taken from the wild each fall and sold to biological supply houses. Collecting for biological experiments and dissection may also be threatening other Wisconsin reptiles and amphibians, as well as many of the world's primates.
Collecting Wood Turtles for pets is another problem. The alert Wood Turtle is a responsive pet. But captive turtles are usually not given proper space to breed. This means lost wild Wood Turtles in the future. Highway deaths take an uncounted number of Wood Turtles also.
Can you think of any other wild animals that have been collected as pets? What effect has this had?
