FIELD BOOK OF PONDS AND STREAMS 



connects the neck and tail, as it does in any other vertebrate 

 — fish, cow, or monke}^ — but it is largely hidden beneath the 

 shell and rigidly joined to it. 



Habits, habitat. — Turtles live in quiet ponds and the pro- 

 tected backwaters of streams. Water snakes also prefer 

 quiet places but they usually lie in shallow rills seldom visited 

 by turtles. Turtles have a keen sense of smell under water 

 as well as in air and they can scent their food at considerable 

 distances. 



Food. — Turtles and snakes are both generally carnivorous. 

 Turtles feed upon a miscellaneous assortment of animal food, 

 dead and alive — small fish, tadpoles, snails, and insects. To 

 this diet the wood and the painted turtles add water plants 

 and seeds (Fig. 21). 



Breeding habits. — Male and female turtles are sometimes 

 but not always distinguishable. The tail of the male may be 

 longer than that of the female; the lower shell or plastron 

 is apt to be slightly convex in the female and concave in the 

 male. In some turtles there are differences in the lengths of 

 the shells, the male wood turtle having a shorter plastron 

 than the female. When turtles are dissected there is no 

 doubt of the sex, for the ovaries of the female are large and 

 conspicuous, with yellow, yolked eggs like those of birds. 



Turtles which frequent the water usually mate there, 

 but this includes the wood turtle which outside of its breeding 

 period seldom goes into the water. When mating, the male 

 wood turtle grasps the shell of the female, holding to it by his 

 claws, head, and tail. The female does all of the swimming 

 but both animals twist and turn, the female often struggling 

 to get to the surface for air. While this struggle is going on 

 the male discharges large numbers of sperm cells into the 

 reproductive passages of the female. These find their way 

 up the oviducts and meet the eggs as they come down the 

 tubes. Turtle eggs look like bird eggs except that the shells 

 are always clear white or pinkish. Some species, such as the 



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