Wood Turtle North American behavior

The diurnal North American Wood Turtle is a moderately sized, docile creature. Like most other turtles, they are rather shy. If kept in the proper environment, they can become excellent pets.

The North American Wood Turtle spends much of its day foraging for food. They are semi-aquatic and capable of eating in and out of the water.Some groups of North American Wood Turtles are believed to lure earthworms out from the ground by pounding the ground with their feet or shell. It is thought that the earthworms mistake the pounding for a mole's approach or thunder and come to the surface to escape the threat or enjoy the rain. The turtle then, of course, eats them. Any time that the North American Wood Turtle does not spend searching for food, they spend basking. They are used to the cold temperatures found in much of their range, and use the sun to warm up. While adapted to cold weather, they cannot withstand the frigid temperatures of a midwestern winter and instead hibernate throughout the season. They usually burrow on the bottom of the streams or rivers where they make their home, where the water cannot freeze. Even when not hibernating, the North American Wood Turtle rarely ventures out of its stream and generally stays within 2.5 and 15 acres of where it was born, its entire life. North American Wood Turtles are rather intelligent and in laboratory tests were found to perform as well as rats on mazes. The North American Wood Turtle is very adaptable and can be found in a variety of habitats. Its capacity to live in a wide range of environments, including streams, creeks, rivers, woods, thickets, meadows, and swamps, may add to the perception of humans that the Wood Turtles are very smart.

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Star Tortoise	Yellow Foot Tortoise

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wood_Turtle_North_American".