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Investigate Box Turtles and Their Habitat


A Box Turtle Habitat in your outdoor classroom provides provides the food, water, and shelter that box turtles need to survive including loose soil where they can burrow down underground as they brumate (hibernate) during the winter.  

 

Click on the topics below to learn more!
Eastern Box Turtles	Box Turtle Adaptations	Habitat Needs	Interesting Facts

    
Click HERE to watch a video all about Eastern box turtles! 

  

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Eastern Box Turtles
Turtles are reptiles (cold-blooded animals that are covered in bony plates and scales). Turtles in Alabama   Alabama is home to 31 species of turtles. This is more species than any other state in the country! This includes some that live mostly in water and some that live on land. Generally, this difference is what separates turtles (aquatic) and tortoises (terrestrial). However, the box turtle is unique in that it is a turtle that primarily lives on land.			Eastern Box Turtle in Habitat Tyler Burgener Click on image to enlarge it
Box Turtle Populations in Alabama   Eastern box turtles can be found statewide in Alabama, but populations are much smaller in some areas than others. Their population numbers are decreasing statewide due to people collecting them from the wild to keep as pets, forests and wetlands (their habitat) being converted for agriculture or development, and cars running them over as they cross the roads that cut through their habitat. There are also other types of box turtles found in Alabama – the three-toed box turtle and the Gulf Coast box turtle. Population Status In Alabama, Eastern box turtles are protected. This means that you cannot collect them from the wild and keep them as pets. If you have box turtles at your school, it’s only because you have been given special permission from the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and you are limited to two, non-breeding turtles.

 

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Box Turtle Adaptations
Adaptations are those features that help an organism survive in a their habitat. Box turtles have a number of adaptations, including these listed below.
Hinged Shell Box turtles have a hinged plastron (bottom of shell). Because of this, they have the unique ability when threatened to retract their limbs, tail, and head into their shell and close it tightly. Many turtles have hinged shells, but box turtles are the only ones that can close theirs completely. As the shell closes, air is released, creating a hissing sound.	Box Turtle with Shell Closed Neil Dazet - Project Noah Click on image to enlarge it
Burrowing    Box turtles are cold-blooded, meaning they cannot control their own body temperature and depend on external heat sources like the sun or a warm rock to keep their bodies warm. In summer months, they escape midday heat under leaf litter or soil by using their specially adapted feet for digging burrows.   During winter months they hibernate, burrowing as much as two feet into loose earth, mud, stream bottoms, old stump holes, or existing mammal burrows. This area where they hibernate is called their “hibernacula”, and they return to the same spot year after year. They can stay underground like this for months at a time. While underground, the turtles are protected from predators, extreme temperatures, and forest fires.
	Box Turtle Burrowed in Leaf Litter Tyler Burgener Click on image to enlarge it
Homing Instinct    Box turtles have a tremendous homing instinct. A home range is the area in which an animal lives its life from birth to death. Box turtles feed, mate, and hibernate in their home range. It is typically about the size of a football field. Their homing instinct allows them to recognize important characteristics of their home range, like locations of food and water. If they travel outside of their home range, they will try their hardest to find their way back home. This is why it is important to help a turtle cross the road if necessary, and not to bring it home and release it where it is far from its home range.	Box Turtle in Habitat Tyler Burgener Click on image to enlarge it

  
   

 

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Habitat
Food
Box turtles are omnivores. This means they eat both meat and vegetables. Adult box turtles eat more vegetation than babies, and babies eat more meats/ proteins than adults. In the wild, young box turtles eat worms, snails, slugs, insects, fish, frogs, salamanders, snakes, eggs, and dead animals. Adults eat mushrooms, berries, wild grapes, persimmons, flowers, weeds (like dandilion leaves), and roots. In your schoolyard wildlife habitat, plants that you install (like parsley and lettuce) or that occur naturally (like wild strawberries or clover) can be food. These plants along with the soil, water, and rocks or logs in habitat also attract bugs and other invertebrates that turtles like to eat.	Box Turtle Eating Mushroom Flickr - Brad Carlson Click on image to enlarge it
Water
In the wild, box turtles get the water that they need by eating vegetation and fruits as well as drinking from ponds and puddles. While they spend most of their lives on land, they do spend a lot of time in water – soaking, hunting, or drinking. In your schoolyard wildlife habitat, box turtles will drink water from your pond or puddles as well as from the vegetation they eat.	Box Turtle in Water Tyler Burgener Click on image to enlarge it
Shelter
Box turtles have excellent built-in protection from predators and other threats – their shells. During colder seasons, box turtles escape the weather by burrowing underground. In the wild, box turtles will live in open woodlands, pastures, and marshy meadows. They prefer moist, forested areas with lots of underbrush. They use stream banks, wetlands, and pond edges to stay cool and hydrated during hot and dry weather. In your schoolyard wildlife habitat, they may be found in shady, un-mowed grassy areas or under leaf litter and logs.	Box Turtle Under Leaf Litter Tyler Burgener Click on image to enlarge it
Places to Raise Young
In the wild, female box turtles dig holes in loose, sandy soil and deposit their eggs. They bury the eggs and leave them there to incubate over the next several weeks and hatch. They do not provide any protection or care to the eggs or babies. In your schoolyard habitat, box turtles may lay eggs in suitable areas with loose, sandy soil. Because of Alabama’s regulations, your are not allowed to have breeding turtles as pets. *If you have box turtles at your school, it’s because you have been given special permission from the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and you can only have two.	Baby Box Turtle  Tyler Burgener Click on image to enlarge it

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Interesting Facts
#1:	​Box turtles’ gender is determined while they are in the egg by the temperature of the substrate surrounding the egg rather than genetics. This is called Temperature Dependent Sex Determination and is common among reptiles. If the eggs in the nest are warm (over 82 degrees Fahrenheit), the turtles are likely to be female. If the eggs not as warm (around 80 degrees Fahrenheit or lower) the turtles are likely to be male.
#2:	Box turtle eggs are thick and leathery. Because of this, they develop a temporary sharp, hard knob on the tip of their upper beak called an “egg tooth” while they are in the egg. They use it to break out of their shell when they are ready to hatch. A few days after hatching, the egg tooth falls off.
		Box Turtle Eggs Flickr - Jason Hollinger Click on image to enlarge it
#3:	Eastern box turtles can live to be 30 years old quite regularly, but can sometimes even reach 50 years of age!

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Alabama Wildlife Federation (1) Alabama Wildlife Federation (2)		Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Insitute
Britannica (1) Britannica (2)

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