Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recall some previous pics were not too clear but maybe in these, against a white background, you could find the features you were talking about in previous posts about Tulip. Want to give it a shot, and see if you can point out which features you identify from ornates, and which from easterns?

Wanda

More views...

And the last...
With sister Suki, who happens to be a year younger! Hehehe

I'm not Kensopher, but I said I'd post some photos of my juvi's and I finally got around to finding a few.

Were most of my juvi's not hibernating, I could probably go out and find one that is nearly identical to yours. I'm still looking, but my photos aren't that organized.

Dottie's handful.

Ornate babies.

Very cute. I like that yawning picture the best.

Lisa, those babies make me feel like getting one from you!

They are adorable

Wanda

I never manage to catch one when I try with the camera
-----
PHRatz

Since I am new to box turtle husbandry, I haven't been witness to how they grow (save for the first few months of life). I was wondering if the pyramiding in that one photo is a natural part of box turtle growth, or is that the result of some type of feeding issue (as in tortoises). I ask only because if pyramiding is as bad in box turtles as it is in tortoises then I would like to know how to avoid it. I hope I have not offended in any way (I've been sitting here thinking about how to diplomatically pose my question), but if I don't ask then I don't know and I just want my turtles to grow up as healthy as can be.
Thanks!

No, I don't mind and I had intended to come back
and address that.

The one with the slight pyramiding is Spotty, my
very first hatchling in my very first clutch.

Spotty was, from the very beginning, a pig and
unfortunately I indulged his appetite and fed him
too much protein. I think it had more to do with
my indulging his voracious appetite because he has
other clutchmates that have less or no pyramiding.

The other turtle in front of Spotty in the bowl, in
the fourth photo down is one of Spotty's siblings
from the same year and he/she has less pyramiding,
and I can think of at least one that has a
beautifully shaped shell with no pyramiding.

Spotty and his siblings (four in the first clutch,
two in the second)hatched in 2001. Two of the
siblings ended up with metabolic bone syndrome.
They have recovered and their shell shape is improving
as they grow, but they will probably always look odd.
I will try to post a photo of them.

My hypothesis on why two babies out of seven had MBD
is that they were smaller and less agressive.
I was dusting the crickets I fed them with rep-cal/herptivite
but not the mealworms. So I think the two weren't getting as many of the crickets, the ones they got were probably being
stolen out of their mouths from more agressive siblings.

Since the first year, I haven't had any scute pyramidding and
I haven't had any MBD. Its been my experience that Rep-cal calcium with D3 does a pretty good job of preventing MBD.

I also start offering the babies romaine lettuce and small bits of tomato when they have shown some growth and are a few months old. Some take awhile, but I eat bagged salads almost everynight so I leave some to distribute among babies and bugs.

I now dust all bugs and make sure I gutload crickets and superworms with goldfish flakes, greens and/or romaine lettuce.

I don't think I've every had one as glutinous(sp?)as Spotty
but if I had it to do over again, I would limit the amount of bugs I gave him and started offering greens, fruits and vegetables earlier. Probabably the reason I gave him too much was to keep him away from the other babies that were trying to eat. He ate faster so I would offer him more bugs to keep him from stealing food from the others. Should have just pulled him out and put him into a shoebox with some salad.

If you have a baby/juvi that seems to have an insatiable appetite, just don't give in to him, and after feeding him a few bugs, offer him some veggies or fruit to fill up on.

By the way, if anyone is wondering when you can start sexing,
Spotty starting "fanning" during the summer of 2005, but he is
still the only one in the group that I know the gender of.

In the top two photos, the baby with Metabolic Bone Disease (or is it syndrome?) is on the left. We call him Bowser (having two kids that were growing up during the 90s and early 21rst century, we have lots of animals named after Pokemon and nintendo characters).

Anyway, MBD Bowser is on the left and I think that was Spotty
on the right. The pics were taken in 7/2002, when they were almost a year old.

The two pics at the bottom are both Bowser.

Anyway, Bowser had the slightly swollen "rubbery" jaw they talk about in MDB. I thought something didn't seem right and I took him out to walk on the pavement and he couldn't lift his plastron up off the pavement. He scooted. He and the other MBD baby had some pyramiding, but there was a "flatness" to their carapace that I didn't see in the others.

Poor little treasure!

Lisa, do you think your vet may give him a shot of calcium, or vit a/d?

When Tulip woke from hybernation last year, the vet said her shell rot could be linked to a liver condition, which may go back to low vit a intake. A shot did the trick, and to strengthen her shell, the vet added calcium, and vit d. She was fine for the rest of the year, and recovered very well.

I already made an appointment for her shots, for next week. I am terrified of going through that again, and she has not yet eaten a bite.

Maybe some shots can help him, since he is so young?

Wanda

Ooops, sorry I forgot to mention that those
photos were taken in the summer of 2002.
Bowser is much better now. Spotty is the
turtle on the right and you can see how much
bigger and colorful Spotty has gotten in that
series of photos I posted. Spotty is in the
third photo down.

I actually had put up the group of photos showing
young Bowser with MBD on the web, so I could show
them to my vet. The vet confirmed my diagnosis, he
had done a paper on it in vet school but he advised me.
Fortunately I had also just read about MBD in Reptiles
magazine

I just started watching what he was eating, made
sure he got plenty of calcium with D3 and made
sure he got outside frequently. It was a slow
process, but he and the other turtle that had it
ate well and gradually got better.

They are all hibernating now.

Thanks very much for the information, Lisa.
Ryan

I'm sorry, Wanda. I don't want to defend the fact that it's an Ornate/Eastern hybrid because I simply don't know. Nobody knows. It's an exercise in futility without confirmation of the sire and dame or genetic testing. I merely said, "Eh, could be". Why not believe the person from which you purchased it?

Structural characteristics, coloration, behavior, etc. are all theoretical when it comes to hybrids. I wouldn't dare defend any theory as to the turtle's ancestry with the little we know about it. If it was wild and we knew the locale, or if we knew which species were being kept together by the seller...maybe.

Either way, Tulip is a very beautiful turtle. Those are nice pictures. Thank you for sharing.

No prob, friend

Wanda

Hi Wanda,
I'm coming into this late but Tulip looks like a Three-toed/Eastern hybrid to me. They have a very big area of intergration in the wild. I'm not seeing any ornate box turtle in her at all.
There is a small article in Copeia, not sure which year I'll have to look it up, that has a picture of a Three-toed/Ornate hybrid. It's a very interesting turtle and was wild caught. You can really tell that it has Ornate in it from the picture. If I can find it I'll scan it and post the picture.

Dan

Butting in, I don't see any sign of ornate in that plain brown turtle, either. Just a shadow pattern that looks like eastern. The animal below was in an overlap zone far west of the Mississippi River where land had been modified. This guy had three toes on each back foot. You have to wonder how many ornate x three-toeds would look this pretty.

I guess I am going color blind, but I don't see a "plain brown" color on Tulip...

Thanks, Dan.

I think I found the paper you are talking about. I listed two references under the "Hybridization...?" post, maybe that is the one you make reference to.

Thanks

Wanda

It was in Copeia Wanda, but not the 1935 article. This was in the early 70's and was in the herpetological notes section and it had a picture of a three-toed/ornate hybrid that was found in the wild I think in MO.

Dan

Dan,

I tried to get copies of those articles through my local library but was instead sent elsewhere. If you can get a hold of that article, I'd really love to see a scan of the pic, and the list of references.

Thanks!

Wanda

So are you saying that if a three-toed has spots
then it is a hybrid?

Sorry, I don't buy it, unless the cross happened
several generations/years ago (and I mean centuries).

I live in Oklahoma, way too far west to have any
eastern/three toed intermingling and we have
three toeds with spots all over the place.

I have several three toed babies that are almost
identical to Wanda's Tulip. As far as I am concerned
that baby is a three toed.

He is just saying that the cross has been documented. When it turns up in a peer-reviewed article, you know it was scrutinized by educated herpetologists.

I want to find all those articles, to be honest. I want to read what they write about descriptions, and see what sources they reference.

As for my tortie, she is a companion animal. Whatever her colors or ancestry turns out to be only satisfies my curiosity

Wanda

There can be more to spots, than spots, Ms. Lisa. Spots can form certain patterns, and certain patterns can suggest hybridization. Multiple characters (like broken radiating lines - show up as spots - on the carapace, and a radiating plastral pattern on a turtle with a non-ornate-body) together can strongly suggest hybridization. It's dicey to rest a determination on a single character.

Peer reviews on hybrids aren't bulletproof, and even genetic sequencing has caused misinterpretations in the past. Heck, HOW many "new" Asian species were described in the past 15 years based on hybrids?

The turtle that's the subject of this thread, well, it's an eastern. Period. No wait, it's a three-toed. Uh, a cross of the two. Er, the cross it was sold as. Curiosity will probably just have to stew on this one, but who cares if it makes a good pet, eh?

Hmm, wrong picture posted again, I need to re-title these things

"The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion."
Arnold H. Glasow

"To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks. "
A. A. Milne