Information on Small Painted Turtles in Ohio

Characteristics of the Midland Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta marginata)

• The turtle is small to medium-sized, and its shell or carapace may reach a length of 5 to 10 inches. The carapace is slightly domed, smooth and often olive-green or black with a vertebral red stripe. The edges of the carapace are often colored, as if by hand, with reddish stripes, bars, lines or blotches along the borders. The forearms are also "painted" with red lines, and the throat and head show pale, yellow lines running from the nose and down across the face to the neck where they gradually turn more reddish colored. The eyes are yellow with a bar line that runs horizontally across the center. The males are normally smaller than the females, often only 5 inches in length when fully grown. The males' front claws are elongated and their tails are also longer.

Environment and Habits

• The turtles favor shallow freshwater areas in the summer and deeper waters in the winter. In the winter they burrow into the debris and mud at the bottom of a lake or river bed and absorb oxygen in the water through an inner lining in the mouth and the cloaca. Here they remain mostly dormant for the colder months. In spring and warm summer months, turtles come to the surface and seek shallow waters where they find an abundance of food and enjoy laying in the sun.

Reproduction and the Young

• As with most turtles, the painted turtle female nests in sandy or gravel covered banks in late spring or early summer. Eggs hatch anytime between 60 to 90 days. The gender of many turtle species is dependent on the temperature at which the eggs develop. The warmer the temperature, the more females will hatch from the eggs, and cooler temperatures produce more males. This is the case for midland painted turtles. The breeding season is typically from May to July. The number of hatchlings both male and female may reach up to 15, and the babies may stay in the nest up until the following spring.

Feeding Habits

• Midland painted turtles are omnivorous, eating whatever they can find. Common foods found in their natural habitat are algaes and aquatic plants such as Elodea and eel grass, but they will eat other plants and live food such as earthworms, insects, tadpoles, mosquito larvae and any dead fish they can find, since they are also scavengers.