Wildlife Watching Wednesday: Bad-Tempered Snapping Turtles
By: Tom Berg
The common snapping turtle has a well-deserved reputation for being bad-tempered. When handled by humans, they hiss and attempt to bite anyone trying to move or lift them. That bite can be quite dangerous, too, since their powerful jaws can amputate careless fingers. Be forewarned: their muscular necks are long enough to stretch back across their shell amazingly far to reach anyone trying to holding them.
This large freshwater turtle can reach weights of 50-75 pounds in the wild, with a shell (carapace) length of 20 inches or more. Most adult snapping turtles do not get that big, however, and individuals with a carapace measuring 10-15 inches are the most common. They have a surprisingly long lifespan; the oldest specimens may live as long as 100 years. Males are larger than females, and most snappers weighing more than 25 pounds are males. Because of their large size and formidable defenses, old turtles have very few predators.
Snapping turtles eat a wide variety of plant and animal material, including large amounts of aquatic plants and fish. Actually, they will eat almost anything they can catch, such as frogs, snakes, snails, worms, insects and even ducks and geese. They are also scavengers, and are happy to eat dead fish and nearly any other dead and rotting animals they find. They perform a valuable environmental cleanup service!
Contrary to popular belief, you should not lift a turtle by its tail – especially a large turtle. Big snapping turtles are heavy enough that lifting them by their tail can cause damage to the spinal column in their tail. Their tail vertebrae simply cannot support that much weight, and the tail bones can separate and become dislocated. Such damage can result in a painful injury for the animal. It’s much safer for the turtle (and you!) to simply watch them from afar.
However, if you see a snapping turtle trying to cross a road, you can help by lifting it with both hands and carrying it to the side of the road it was heading towards. Just be sure to hold it by the shell far enough back towards its back legs so its head can’t reach you for a bite!
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