Turtle Census: Tagging and Release (Video)
This morning we held another turtle census field exercise at our museum. The turtle census is a means for us to monitor the health of the local turtle populations as well as the spread of invasive species. Now I already wrote a post about the census last week (which you can read here), so I won't bore you all by explaining it all over again here. However, this week I was able to bring my video camera along for the adventure, so I put together a short clip so you could see the tagging process first hand (sorta)!
I apologize for the quality; the lens had a weird smudge, but the video turned out pretty well! Enjoy!
I'll upvote everyone tomorrow morning when my voting power regenerates
These animals are fascinating 🐢
So cool! I love turtles :)
Keep up the good work :)
Interesting way to mark them.
Unfortunately here in Tasmania we've had no turtles since the miocene so I'm unlikely to stumble across one.
Actually, you COULD carry out similar studies there. You're right, Tasmania doesn't have any native freshwater turtles, however there are a few species of turtles that have been introduced and now are invasive. A study like this one could be useful to keep track of how the populations of invasive turtles spread (although I'm willing to be that when these turtles are encountered, they are probably culled and not tagged/released).
Yes thats true enough. Long-necked turtles have been found here. One just down the road from me in fact but I've only heard of one breeding record. Probably have more chance of seeing a Tasmanian tiger 😊 Most will be illegally dumpes pets, ...and yes any that are found are being culled.
turtles are my favorite aquatic animal! i had a number of them as a kid until my mother got tired of replacing them, then we tried an aquarium but fish don't have the personity of red-eared sliders ;)
Wouldn't it be easier to use a simple pair of diagonal pliers with nippers at the end? Quick, like fingernail clipping. A good pair of Stanley, Craftsman, or Klein pliers would last for thousands of turtle shell nippings. No more vibrating that file over the shell 30 times, back and forth.
Yes it would, but the people marking these turtles are predominantly volunteers (myself excluded). Pliers could be problematic because there is the chance that you could clip just a little bit too far into the scutes on smaller turtles, resulting in injury or pain. The other reason is that a few of the marginal scutes (like the "7" and "70") are right on the bridge and are too thick to be marked by pliers, so filing into them is much easier and safer. But when all is said and done, we get turtles through the process really fast (about 30 in less than a couple hours) so there isn't really a need for a different solution.
The files also leave very uniform notches that are identical on each and every turtle so they are unmistakable.
Thanks for the comment!
Do you have any published accounts of how to train a turtle for racing? I need to know how to get the fastest turtle.
Well, that would depend on the turtle. The problem is many species of turtles are not very bright (I love them to death, but some are dumb as heck!). However, they do have relatively good memory, and if you can train one using food motivation, that could work. Most turtle races don't actually use trained turtles; it is heavily based on luck. But if you had a turtle that, when released, immediately began searching for food, perhaps that would send him/her speeding off.
Some people have had luck target training some of the more intelligent species, but I can't say whether or not that would be advantageous inn racing.