>> On second thought I think Scooter must be a girlie turtle. I checked all the photos I could of male yellow muds and they all have those big, prehensile tails that look like fingers. That is what most, if not all of the Kinosternid males have.
>> I think that I got stumped from the photo since the tail looks larger than all of the red cheeked, white lipped and scorpion mud turtle females that I have had experience with.

And this morning I did a web search to look for photos.. didn't find much so I wonder where did you find male photos? I'd love to see some!
I did find the David Kirkpatrick mud/musk article that's been on the web for years & years.
I read the yellow mud portion of his article & he did state that in yellow muds the females often DO have that spike on the end of the tail same as males. He also stated that in some males you'll see the concave plastron as you'd see in so many other species or turtles and tortoise.
Scooter's plastron is as flat as our female sulcata's is. Totally flat no hint at all of concavity. Our male box has enough concavity that you can tell he's male, our Chip had a concave plastron but doesn't now. Once he's healed & the acrylic is removed well..who knows if it will be concave again.
Our female box turtles all have extremely flat plastrons too like Scooter. Our male western painted has only a hint of concavity.. but if you look really hard it is there.

Really the tail you see in that Scooter photo is it, the whole thing. I've tried to pull it away from the body, Scooter pulls it up against his/her behind every time & then it's so short & stubby that I can't grab hold of it when it's pulled up like that.
I know it looks fat but it's short & the only reason I was able to get that shot is because I gave Scooter a bug to eat. Scooter forgot to hide the tail when food was around lol.
Still I will keep trying for a better shot & if I manage to get one I'll post it.
Thanks again for all your input this has been very interesting for me either way.
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PHRatz

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