Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Can anyone ID these? They came in recently with a shipment of Scorpion Muds, but definitely look different than other Scorps I've seen. They are about 5.5" and are much paler than the pic, even paler than K.flavescens. Diagnostic features include three weak carapace keels, hinges that completely close, seam of rear-hinge curved, unnotched posterior plastron, small barbels, raised 10 & 11 marginals, light grey skin, mottled head, and lower jaw nearly immaculate. No locality info available. It keyed out to K.creaseri, but I'd like to try another key before I am convinced. Any Kinosternon experts out there? TIA.
Doug

N/P

Very difficult to tell from the pictures.
You have no idea of the country of origin?
They look like K. cruentatum to me. Old cruentatum imports are sometimes pale with an orange plastron.
I SERIOUSLY doubt they are creaseri. Creaseri has a very distinctive hooked beak and is pretty much dark and unmarked.
Could you provide a head shot?
If they came in with 'scorpion' mud turtles does that mean South American scorpioides or Central American?

Side Shot

Here's a head shot. Sorry for the quality of these pics, my camera is old and I am a horrible photographer. It may be easier to see all these in the photo gallery. The color of the shell on this shot is pretty accurate. Also, I thought it might be K.s.cruentatum as well until I saw the pics at Empire of The Turtle (note the anterior margin of the rear plastral hinge). Perhaps it's an intergrade? I will attempt to get some locality data on these.
Doug

Empire Of The Turtle

You have to remember that many of the tropical mud turtles are very plastic in their appearance. The same species may look very different depending on where in the range they are from and even the habitat they are from.
Here in the US, many of our native species look pretty much the same throughout their respective ranges.
Yellow muds and three striped muds can look quite different from different areas though.

Also, some of the members of the scorpioides complex change greatly as they age from juvenile, to adult, to old adult.

Yes, I agree, the S.A. muds exhibit a high level of plasticity and integrading which makes ID a real pain (but a fun kinda pain for us turtle geeks). But presumeably, there are some characteristics which tend to be less variable and are therefore considered diagnostic. And it are these characteristics which form the basis of species ID keys. Now as I mentioned, K.s.cruentatum is on my list of suspects, but here's what bugs me....on two separate Kinosternon keys (Ernst & Barbour's and Iverson's) one of final diagnostic feature used to separate K.scorpiodes and K.creaseri is the anterior margin of the rear plastral hinge; the former species described as being straight across and the latter as angled. But whatever they are, they are neat turtles and hopefully they'll breed (yup, gotta pair
Doug