Reptile & Amphibian Forums

O.K.... you guys said that a female has a more dome-shaped carapace that males so that they could easily store developing eggs. Well, of the only 4 EBTs I have seen close up in person (that male I told you all about who I called T. Herman and three females at John Ball Zoo), I am pretty sure the male had greater carapace height/carpace length ratio than the three females.

And tails.... the example of a male I saw had no tail, so I have no comparison with the females I have seen. But I have a female red-eared slider, and the female EBTs had significantly smaller tail-length/carapace lenght ratio than my slider. On the other hand, the young three-toed boxie I have has a much larger tail-length/carapace length than the three female EBTs I have seen. If the tail length does not increase much at all, my three-toed, my three-toed is a female. If the ratio stays about the same as the little turtle grow, I would say the little three-toed is a male. Can anyone tell me whether tail-lenth?carapace-length remains the same as boxies grow? Or tails just thicken, ending up looking like the female EBTs I have seen?

You need to observe far more box turtles...like 400 instead of 4. Box turtles have been very abundant in both areas where I have lived...I have averaged seeing about 50 wild box turtles a year since I was 6. Now, in the South, the number is closer to 150 per year...I have to drive A LOT for my job. There are always exceptions, but males of all Eastern box turtle species are more laterally compressed as a rule. Carapace length is much less sexually dimorphic. For instance, male Easterns tend to be the larger sex while male Three-toeds tend to be the smaller sex.

Your turtle will most likely undergo many structural changes before reaching adulthood. The changes can occur very rapidly. I have a turtle from NJ parentage that has taken nearly 9 years to mature. I was certain that it was female. It is shaping up to be a monstrous box turtle. At 6 inches, it awoke from brumation last year. In a month's time, its tail lengthened and thickened, its eyes turned red, and it developed a brilliant yellow coloration on its head and neck. It is now very male and still growing.

I agree with mj below...about 4 or 4.5 inches for most. It is a best guess until then unless you know incubation temperatures. At this point...just stop guessing and be patient or you'll make yourself crazy.

Who told you that T. Hermann was a male? Misdiagnosis of sex is very common in box turtles.

Well said. I live in Maryland and also have a job that reequires me to be on the road a lot. I've always lived in MD or PA, always in the middle of Eastern box turtle territory, and have been informally studying and observing the wild population during the warm months for the last 50 years. Your description of the big young male you have that originated in New Jersey reminds me of the female I have that originated in LI, New York. She's 6" long and weighs over 800 gm. I raised her from a hatchling and she's almost 11 yrs. old now. I always wondered whether her size was attributable to being overfed while she was growing. The average size of a mature female that I encounter in the wild in Maryland is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 1/4" and 450-550 gm. I had come to believe from numerous anecdotal accounts from other observers that northern populations of t. c. carolina tend to be slightly larger on average than southern populations, and that really large specimens are more common farther north. I recently read C. Kenneth Dodd's North American Box Turtles and he made reference to a female that was found in 1970 in Ossining, New York that measured 198 mm and 1395 gm (almost 8" and over 3 lbs). That's a gigantic female (or male) and dwarfs the one I have. I've also read that NA Wood turtles from the northern parts of their range mature more slowly and grow larger than ones from southern areas. I'm always on the lookout for really outsized box turtle specimens in Maryland and am constantly weighing ones I find, but I have yet to come across a wild specimen larger than 6" and 600 gm. It just seems from my recollections as a kid that there were bigger turtles around, but I never measured them back then, so I don't know if they were actually bigger, or whether their images just expanded in my head, like when you go back and look at a house you grew up in that you remember as being bigger than it actually was. It's a wierd hobby, but it keeps me out of trouble and gets me outdoors and away from the computer and the TV.

I agree with you on that. Totally anecdotal...on average, the turtles I found(and still find during family visits) in NJ were significantly larger than those I find down South. And, they were far more colorful.

It sounds like you have some neat data there...wonder if you could submit it?

I agree with mj below...about 4 or 4.5 inches for most. It is a best guess until then unless you know incubation temperatures. At this point...just stop guessing and be patient or you'll make yourself crazy.

Who told you that T. Hermann was a male? Misdiagnosis of sex is very common in box turtles.

******

Not going crazy yet

I figured that T. Herman was a male based on the red eyes and extremely bright yellow.... and I think the turtle had a concave plastron.