{"id":6164,"date":"2010-05-12T20:51:47","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T01:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=6164"},"modified":"2010-05-13T06:43:25","modified_gmt":"2010-05-13T11:43:25","slug":"where-the-boys-are-male-diamondback-terrapins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=6164","title":{"rendered":"Where the Boys Are — Male Diamondback Terrapins"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Handsome Male Diamondback Terrapin<\/em><\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Turtle Journal returned to a very active mating aggregation in Wellfleet Bay on Outer Cape Cod last Friday.\u00c2\u00a0 The objective of our sampling expedition was to\u00c2\u00a0examine male diamondback terrapins.\u00c2\u00a0 While mature female terrapins will be coming on to shore next month to nest, male terrapins never leave the water.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re much more elusive and once dispersed after the spring mating aggregation, they are difficult to track and to capture.\u00c2\u00a0 So, this Friday we eschewed large females and focused on the smaller males.<\/p>\n

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Typical Male Diamondback Terrapin Tail<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Terrapins exhibit sexual dimorphism.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0A polysyllabic word that simply means that they differ in size between genders.\u00c2\u00a0 In the case of diamondback terrapins, females are twice as long and wide, and four times as massive as males.\u00c2\u00a0 The key distinguishing feature between males and females is the tail.\u00c2\u00a0 Females have small thin tails and males, as demonstrated by the specimen pictured above, have long thick tails.<\/p>\n

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Where the Boys Are: Heading Back to Mating Aggregation<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Who said that turtles have no personality?\u00c2\u00a0 Whoever they may be, it’s clear they haven’t spent much time with diamondbacks.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s a small array of personalities that we found during our brief sampling adventure.<\/p>\n

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Shy<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Bold<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"run<\/a><\/p>\n

Upset<\/em><\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"run<\/a><\/p>\n

Surprised<\/em><\/strong>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Unfazed<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00c2\u00a0 Handsome Male Diamondback Terrapin\u00c2\u00a0 Turtle Journal returned to a very active mating aggregation in Wellfleet Bay on Outer Cape Cod last Friday.\u00c2\u00a0 The objective of our sampling expedition was to\u00c2\u00a0examine male diamondback terrapins.\u00c2\u00a0 While mature female terrapins will be coming on to shore next month to nest, male terrapins never leave the water.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6164"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6199,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6164\/revisions\/6199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}