Eastern Painted Turtles

From last summer, here are a couple Eastern Painted Turtles. I suspect they were out catching some rays, basking in the sun. If you get a good look at the carapace, these turtles are pretty easy to identify by the way the scutes on the carapace create almost straight lines from side to side.

I have occasionally seen turtles that look very similar but with scutes that don't align; I'm suspicious that they might be Midland Painted Turtles. These 2 turtles with similar names are actually subspecies of the same Painted Turtle species. Since they are subspecies, I suspect they can and do interbreed at times.

All that green in the water may not bother these turtles; in fact they probably eat it. I'm not sure of its composition but Painted Turtles are known to eat a fair amount of "duckweed and algae". 

August 19, 2021 at Duke Farms
Photo 152592365, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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