Common Snapping Turtle

Chelydra serpentina

Common Snapping Turtle

SNTU

Status

The Common Snapping Turtle is common rangewide.

Description

The Common Snapping Turtle is a large species, attaining a length of 20–47 cm and a weight of 5–15 kg as an adult. This turtle is easily recognized by its large head, carapace with three longitudinal keels, small, cross-shaped plastron, and long tail with prominent scales (Conant and Collins 1991). This reptile has an aggressive disposition. Pritchard (1979) recognized four subspecies: serpentina (United States except Florida); osceola (Florida); rossignonii (Central America) and acutirostris (South America).

Distribution

Chelydra serpentina ranges from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, southern Quebec, and Alberta, southward (east of the Rockies) to Florida and the Texas coast, and southward through Mexico and Central America to Ecuador (Ernst and Barbour 1972).

Habitat

Common Snapping Turtles are common in most permanent freshwater, and some brackish or estuarine habitats, including lakes, reservoirs, rivers, swamps, bays, wet meadows, and borrow pits. Soft, muddy bottoms with abundant aquatic vegetation are preferred (Ernst and Barbour 1972). All sizes of both sexes have been encountered on land, apparently traveling between aquatic habitats (Gibbons 1978).

Special Requirements

The Common Snapping Turtle requires soft-bottomed bodies of water with abundant aquatic vegetation and food.

Breeding Habits

Mating occurs from April to November. The females nest from May to September, depositing 11–83 eggs in a nest 8–16 cm deep. Incubation takes 55–123 days, with most young hatching in late August to early October, although some may be delayed until the following spring (Ernst and Barbour,1972). Well over half the nests are destroyed by mammalian predators or extreme weather factors (Hammer 1969).

Food Habits

These omnivorous turtles consume insects, crustaceans, fish, amphibians, snakes, turtles, birds, and small mammals, as well as various plant material.

Management Suggestions

Common Snapping Turtles seem to thrive in bodies of water or marshy situations which are unpolluted, contain plenty of aquatic or emergent vegetation, and abundant food. Since these are the same conditions required by most lake or pond game fishes, management for these game species will also benefit this turtle.

Remarks

This is one of the few reptiles that has potential economic value as a food item (Clark and Southall 1920; Harding and Holman, 1990).

Additional References

Gibbons and others 1988; Mount 1975.