Last weekend I kept seeing snapping turtles in the water with their shells at an angle to the surface. Initially I couldn’t figure out what was going on, until a helpful fellow photographer explained that the turtles were mating.
Mating? That sort of made sense, but I was a little confused, because in each case I could see only a single turtle. Doesn’t it take two to tango? I kept watching and eventually I was able to see that there were two turtles, but one of them was being held underwater most of the time. It seemed pretty violent. On the positive side, it seems that the female did not bite off the male’s head in the process, as praying mantises are said to do while mating.
As I look the photos below, I have trouble identifying body parts and determining which ones belong to which turtle. I don’t understand the anatomy of the Eastern Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina serpentina) and will leave that to the experts.
Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
That looks a bit akward..:-)
I saw two box turtles mating once. They were in a shallow ditch along a country road. The female was underwater; the male wasn’t.
This is indeed something of an anatomical challenge, Mike, but I’m pretty confident that you caught them while they were thinking about and planning to take it to the limit, but weren’t there yet. In the top photo you can see his right hind foot clasping her shell and, in the second, his left hind foot. Things are progressing, but it will be a while before they’re lounging back with a drink and a smile.
Life wasn’t meant to be easy 🙂
Definitely a more unusual photo.
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