Spunky Snapping Turtles

Mud Pond is a turtle paradise. It's warm and shallow, with a wide variety of habitats and plentiful food. There's also a swampy corridor to the deeper and cooler waters of Hicks Pond. This provides a refuge if Mud Pond becomes too warm in summer.

Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta), and Common Snapping Turtles (Chelydra serpentina) both make their homes in Mud Pond. We'll take a look at painted turtles at some other time. For now, let's talk about snapping turtles.

Snapping turtles have a bit of an image problem. They look like rotting logs with a bad attitude.

You lookin' at me?

And what's with all the snapping? Are their jaws strong enough to break a broom handle, or could a snapping turtle bite through your finger bones? Well, no.

A snapper could give your finger a nasty laceration requiring stitches, but a broom handle would likely escape with merely a dent or a few missing slivers. A different species, the Alligator Snapping Turtle, is another story, but we don't have those in Maine.

Snapping turtles bite with their jaws to grab and eat food, just as many other animals do. However, their snappy moniker comes from a different behavior. When threatened on land, a snapping turtle will extend its neck and lunge forward while making an exaggerated, wide-mouthed snap.

Turtles that do this kind of snapping aren't angry. They're afraid. Many other turtle species can withdraw into their shells for protection against land predators, but snapping turtles can't.

A baby snapper, showing its small plastron.

Snappers also have quite small plastrons (the 'belly' portion of their shells), which makes them especially vulnerable to attack if flipped over.

And, being turtles, they aren't particularly fast - at least when compared to four-legged pursuers such as coyotes. Their best defense on land is a feisty attitude and a quick bite.

I'm outta here!

Snappers are fast swimmers, so they're far more likely to swim away when threatened in the water.

Alternatively, they may bury themselves in the mud or hide among aquatic vegetation, where their log-like appearance provides excellent camouflage.  

Nobody here but us water plants.

Since they don't feel as vulnerable in the water, snappers may even show a curious side and approach unfamiliar items such as boats, docks, or even people - possibly nudging them with their snouts!

Both male and female snappers can travel long distances overland to reach new habitats if necessary. However, if you see a snapper on land, it's most likely a female searching for a soft, sandy location to lay eggs.

Out to lay eggs.

Unfortunately, the vegetation-free, sandy sides of roads seem like great egg-laying locations to snappers. This leads to high car mortality of adults and hatchlings. Roadside egg clutches are also likely to be found by raccoons, skunks, and other foraging predators.

Even without humans and their roads, the mortality of snapping turtle eggs is high. Snappers counter this by laying lots of eggs and living a very long time - perhaps more than 100 years. This type of reproductive strategy relies on adult turtles surviving for a long time, especially since they may not reach sexual maturity until they're 20 years old or more.

This youngster won't be sexually mature for many years.

If mortality of adult snappers increases significantly, populations may suffer a rapid and drastic decline. So far, the species is holding its own in Maine.

Every year, snapping turtles lay eggs along Greenwood Road near Mud Pond. And every year, most (or all) of the nests are destroyed by raccoons and other animals.

A successful batch of hatchlings, about to be released.

Every few years, we rescue some clutches and incubate the eggs to hatching, in an effort to mitigate a little of the human-caused mortality of these craggly, charismatic creatures.

Besides, say what you will, but baby snappers are adorable little monsters!

C'mon, now! I'm cute.