Natural History of the Ornate Box Turtle, Terrapene ornata ornata AgassizLegler, John M.
Science
Natural History of the Ornate Box Turtle, Terrapene ornata ornata Agassiz
Legler, John M.
Ornate box turtle
11:20 38.6 Stops activities every 10 seconds or so, rests chin
on ground and gapes widely; will still pull into
shell when prodded with stick.
11:23 39.2 Still wildly active; continues to gape widely every
few seconds.
11:27 39.4 Frothing at mouth profusely.
11:30 39.6 Attempts to escape are now in short feeble bursts.
11:31 Turtle released; crawls toward me and immediately
seeks shade of my body; when I move off, turtle
seeks shade of small isolated weed on pond embankment;
turtle removed to damp earth at edge
of pond.
11:35 39.5 Attempts to burrow into mud at edge of pond.
11:36 Enters shallow water and moves slowly back to
shore.
11:37 38.8 Turtle thrown into center of pond where it remains
motionless and drifts with wind to opposite
shore; remains inactive in mud and shallow water
at edge of pond; temperature of water near turtle
35.5.
11:57 35.0 Moves 50 ft. up slope to shade of low vegetation.
01:55 P. M. 32.5 Turtle has not moved.
The overheating may have incapacitated the turtle since it moved only
50 feet in the next two days; its body temperatures on the two days
subsequent to the experiment were 26.8 and 20.6, respectively.
The mentioned gaping, as in higher vertebrates generally, cools the
animal by evaporation from the moist surfaces of the mouth and
pharynx. By keeping the mouth open for more than a few minutes at a
time in hot dry weather, a turtle would surely lose body water in
amounts that could not always be easily replaced. Ornate box turtles
seem to utilize evaporation for cooling only in emergencies and rely
for the most part on radiation and conduction to lower body
temperature after reaching a relatively cool, dark retreat.
Box turtles were never active at body temperatures below 15 degrees
and were seldom active at temperatures below 24 degrees. The two
lowest temperatures (15.3° and 16.3°) were taken from individuals
crossing roads on overcast days in early May.
In 78 box turtles that were under cover because their environmental
temperatures were low, the body temperatures ranged from 2.7 to 30.6
degrees (mean 19.8 ± 6.38[sigma]). The range of body temperatures in
this group is greater than in the other groups shown in Figure 22
because low body temperatures were studied over a wide range of
conditions, including hibernation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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