Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a painted turtle that I always assumed was an eastern, but upon doing some research, maybe its a midland. What would be some distinguishing features to tell the two apart?

It's not important, but I am curious!

Hi,

Most herp guides will tell you that for an Eastern painted turtle, the yellow line patterns that separate each scute on the carapace would be very checkered...like in 90 degree angles, while for the Midland, they're less straight with some indentations (hard to describe without a picture). And another thing is if you look at the plastron of an Eastern painted, it should be solid yellow while a Midland would have some sort of splotchy pattern in the center.

But here's the catch. Where these two turtles are found together, they interbreed so you might end up with an assortment of patterns that makes it harder to distinguish what kind. Personally I think it's just much more difficult to distinguish the two from let's say southerns or westerns where there are more distinct variations.

Johnny

Thanks for the info. It kinda confirmed what I was already thinking - I'm not going to know for sure!

She was wild caught, and both midland and eastern are in the area.

Actually, she looks just like the little guy on the painted turtle home page! Does that help us?

the key to identifyinmg te "true" eastern is that the coastal scutes alingn with teh vertebrals .
In the other painted turtles (and all other North American species) the coastals are alteranting with respect to the vertebrals.
But indeed as was said above they do intergrade.
They are probably not really subspecies in the academic sense at all anyway.

Thanks, both of you, for the information.

They are definately alternating. I also did a little more research and have come to believe she is a midland.

Who knew? lol