Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey all, i just have a quick question... my larger RES imm almost positive is a female... (only reason im not sure is its only a little over 2 years old....) now i had previously saved 4 baby RES from chinatown in NY back in oct, one of them just passed unfortunately but i wasnt expecting much from it, it was missinng limbs and all that fun stuff. so that leaves me with my 3 babies and a 2yr old. they all get along great bask together the whole 9 yards. one of the babies has grown wayyy faster than the other 2 left and is about half the size of the 2 year old now. now it seems everyday i walk in my room and see the 2 of them sitting on the bottom of the tank doing the mating dance, now i thought it took males generally 2- 3 years to "come of age" and females 4 so that would leave none of mine at an age to do this... but they are... can anyone give me some info here??

sorry for such a long post i wanted to give as much innfo as possible

You didn't give specific sizes. Size more than age seems to indicate sexual maturity. Plus, from what I've heard, some males start the mating dance long before attempting mating - sort of how you see young goats and sheep practicing heat-butting long before they can mate.

Katrina

Hi thanks for the reply, i wasnt aware age wasnt all that important the big one is 3 inches from front of the shell to the back, the little guy that keeps startinng these dances is only 2 inches...
i was just shocked to see them so young doinng this. i've had 5-6inch ones do it many times but never this small either way just giving the sizes of my buggers

Maybe we should find something to call it besides the mating dance. Although turtles do the claw vibrating thing prior to mating, they also do it for a bunch of other reasons. I have had solitary turtles do it to fish, rocks, and plants. I have had males do it to males, female to female, male to female and female to male, without ever mating. I even had one turtle that used to do it to fish right before he caught and ate them. I guess it served as a distraction. Turtles of all shapes, sizes, and sexes will do what we inappropriately call the "mating dance" for any or no reason whatsoever.
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