Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey! I have two turtles, a RES that i got from a petstore, and a painted that was a rescue, a bunch of kids were bouncing basketballs on the poor little guy. anyways, both of them are doing great! The reason i'm writting is because my friend has a painted and a black turtle with orange spots that she keeps together. They have started to breed, and laid eggs about 2 weeks ago. The eggs didn't make it tho, but they are still breeding and we think they may lay more eggs. can eggs that were from two diffrent kinds of turtles be furtile? If so , what kind will they be, and how do we go about incubating them?? Thanks!

YEs and No. There is often interbreeding within the same genus, just to name 2 examples, Red Eared Sliders x Yellowbelly Sliders,(Trachemys), and Three-Toed Box Turtles x Ornate Box Turtles(Terrapene),and so on. In some cases, different turtle genus's have been known to interbreed, but you don't see it rampant. Such cases here in the U.S. include Map Turtles x Red Eared Sliders, Blandings Turtles x Wood Turtles, Spotted Turtles x Bog Turtles to name a few.

To my knowledge there haven't been any documented cases of Painted Turtles and Spotted Turtles breeding to produce live young. What happens in most cases of cross genus breeding like your friends turtles, where different turtle species happen to mate with each other under unnatural conditions, ie captivity, is that the female lays unfertile eggs. Painted Turtles and Spotted Turtles occur very often in the same habitat in the wild, but this does not result in a new hybrid.

Unless anyone in this chat has actually seen a Spotted X Painted hybrid and can add some advice, I'd say the eggs will continue to be infertile, but who knows, amazing things can happen.

-JG