Turtle Journal

Feisty Female Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus)

Mating season for gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus) in Florida comes each April and May.  With rising temperatures and bright sunshine today, the entire tortoise community on the Gulf Coast of Naples, Florida went out looking for action. 

Gopher Tortoise near Ritz Carlton Beach Resort in Naples

These gopher tortoises on Vanderbilt Beach occupy the most expensive habitat, inch for inch, of any turtles in the world with large burrows tunneled in front of five-star resorts and billion dollar condominium high rises.  They excavate openings to capture sweet Gulf breezes that ventilate their underground homes that directly overlook brightly decorated swimming cabañas and beach umbrellas for elite jet-set tourists from around the globe.  These critters must understand, and perhaps they even invented, the real estate phrase: “location, location, location!”

Nearly 15-Inch Long Female Gopher Tortoise

While we’ve been conditioned to think of tortoises as plodding animals, steady but slow as the fable goes, this illusion would be crushed by the reality of a gopher tortoise on the hunt for a mating companion.  Turtle Journal encountered a very large and extremely feisty female tortoise this morning, strutting her feminity among the burrows in the dunes wedged between the Ritz Carlton Naples Beach Resort and the Gulf of Mexico.  This turtle hissed at the unintended intrusion, kicked sand and stomped through the high grass and brush like a rhinoceros on steriods.  Later in the heat of the day, other mature tortoises were observed cavorting in the sandy dunes.

Vanderbilt Beach Gopher Tortoise at Entrance to Burrow

With all this frenetic hormonal activity today, the start of nesting season can only be a couple of weeks off, as female tortoises begin to bury their eggs in mounds of warm sand near the entrance to their burrows for incubation under the Florida sun.

Male Spotted Turtle #1 from Marion, MA 

Today dawned bright, beautiful and springtime warm.  Turtle Journal checked an abandoned cranberry bog in Marion on the South Coast of Massachusetts for spotted turtle mating activity.  Sure enough, four spotted turtles were basking on the bank of a shallow creek channel.  As they heard our approach, turtles quickly slipped into the water and hid under the dense vegetation.

Carapace of Male Spotted Turtle #1

Twenty feet further along the creek, another basking spotted turtle tried the same escape trick, but without dense vegetative cover, he was easily netted.  A quick look at his carapace confirmed that this spotted turtle had been marked #1; that is, the first spotted turtle captured in this wetlands in April 2006 by Sue Wieber Nourse’s advanced marine science class under a major research and education grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Plastron of Male Spotted Turtle #1

Spotted turtle #1 shows distinctive male characteristics: the long, thick tail with opening far beyond the shell and a concavity in the center posterior of the plastron.  Sexual dichromatism in spotted turtles is highlighted by this male’s drab colored neck as opposed to a female’s bright orange/yellow coloring.

Concavity of Male Spotted Turtle #1

This image illustrates the plastron concavity of spotted turtle males, as well as the drabber neck coloration.

Male Spotted Turtle “Looking for Love”

After a complete physical examination and the collection of shell measurements and weight, spotted turtle #1 was released to rejoin his friends in this springtime mating aggregation.  Spotted #1 was 12 years old in 2006 and 16 years old today.  There were no significant differences in linear measurements of length and width of carapace (top shell) and plastron (bottom shell).  His weight in April 2006 was 160 grams and today he hit the scales at 174 grams.

Comparison of Male Spotted Turtle #1, 2006 to 2010

One very troubling difference between #1’s appearance in 2006 and today is the loss of most of his right rear limb.  In 2006, we observed that this turtle had lost the claws on its right rear limb.  Today, as you can see from the plaston images above, a large part of its right rear limb is missing.  Still, upon release, as you can easily determine  from the video, his movement on land and swimming in the creek appeared unhampered by the injury.