Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What's the earliest age that male and female box turtles start to look different? I have six babies, seven months old. Four are kind of plain, just like most pictures I've seen. The other two are dramatically more colorful. They're getting bright red markings on their heads and front legs, and they have brighter spots on the carapace than their siblings. All six babies get the same diet. Any thoughts? Sorry I don't have pics.

Well, my experience is with one male turtle only, without a female of same age to compare. Mine hatched on October 2003. He was always a brightly colored hatchling, but I don't know if that was maleness or just his genes. In any case, he really didn't develop other secondary characteristics until late 2007, at almost the age of four. The characteristics at that time were not very defined, but I thought he was getting brighter, it looked like the plastron was starting to become concave etc. He came out of hibernation this year 2008 even brighter, and the rest of the male characteristics developed over summer. By the second half of summer his eyes became red and he started mounting the females.
Given that yours are from the same parents, maybe the coloration is an early indicator, but I don't know. I would like to hear form more people that raised hatchlings to adulthood. Tess? Pat? Ken?

Based on my own observations here with the handful of hatchlings that have been raised to adulthood, color and/or pattern at that young age is not a definitive indicator of gender, especially if you consider that it's not reliable in adults either.

You probably won't start to see noticeable characteristics until the turtle gets to be 200g or more, and even then it may not be obvious.

Be patient.

One thing to keep in mind is that females can lay eggs in the same clutch that were fathered by different males, if they mated with more than one male. If the mother mated with a colorful male and a drab looking one, some of the babies may look very different from one another. Even when only one male is involved, there can be vast differences in the colors of the babies. At that age, though, it's way too early to tell if they are male or female. You could have a very colorful female that shows more color than a less colorful male at that age. There are too many variables to be certain until they get a good bit older.

Ditto to Steph and mj.

In some of the other subspecies it can be more evident at young ages. But, I haven't found it to be that way in Easterns.