Stories

If you were lucky enough to have Aesop’s fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” read to you at a young age, then you know how this story ends. The hare/rabbit mockingly challenges the tortoise/turtle to a race. Then, the rabbit is so confident of his speed that he takes a nap in the middle of the race and loses to the much slower turtle. The moral of the story offers us an important metaphor for life — “slow and steady wins the race.”

When it comes to North Carolina’s state reptile, the Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina), slow and steady may not be enough to compete with the speediest, most confident species the Earth has ever seen – us humans. Homo sapiens have found fossilized remains of Eastern Box Turtles dating back 5 million years, yet we’ve only dated our own earliest remains back to something like 200,000+/- years. That means 96% of the time that Eastern Box Turtles have been slowly walking the Earth (4.8 million years), they haven’t had to worry about us confident, speedy humans. Now they do. But why is that?

Both North and South Carolina have listed Eastern Box Turtle as a declining species across much of the Carolina Piedmont and a priority for protection in their State Wildlife Action Plans. The primary causes of this decline are – would you believe – human induced. Habitat loss, road mortality, and illegal collecting top the list.  They can take up to 10 years to reach breeding age, if they make it. We see plenty of Eastern Box Turtles here at Southern 8ths, but how are their populations doing in the Carolinas, and what can we do to help them thrive for another 5 million years (or more)?

To help answer those questions, we brought in the experts. This summer, a dedicated team of biology students and their professor from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, submitted a research proposal to Carolina Wildlands Foundation to help us figure it out. Sydney Grant, a lifelong South Carolinian pursuing a master’s degree in biology, leads the Eastern Box Turtle study at Southern 8ths, under the direction of biology professor Dr. Kiyoshi Sasaki. Sydney is assisted by Luke Reed and Jacob Hilgemann, who are studying Eastern Box Turtles In a more urban setting at Winthrop Woods on the university campus. Over time, the comparison of rural and urban populations may reveal important findings that can support efforts to protect these unique reptiles.

On July 14 – 16, the turtle team braved heat and humidity, bushwhacking their way through the deciduous woods and forest edges for hours, constantly scanning the forest floor for the dome-like turtle shells. Their mission: locate, document, and add tracking devices to twelve Eastern Box Turtles in different habitats around the property. Their results: mission accomplished!

The search for land turtles is kind of a walking meditation, with the group spread out for a peaceful, contemplative, purposeful walk in the woods. But every so often, someone catches a glimpse of that distinctive camouflage shell pattern among the leaves and forest plants and yells out “I found a turtle!”  The twelve turtles ranged in size and age, from 1- or 2-year-olds that fit in the palm of your hand, to larger adults of 5 or 6 inches in length, some of whom were likely to be years older than the students themselves.

It helps to search for the turtles after a summer rain, when they tend to be more active. The group found more of them in lush ground vegetation (including the widely, wildly invasive Japanese stiltgrass), and often near one of their preferred foods – wild mushrooms. One of the little guys they collected still had some yellow mushroom bits stuck to his mouth, so his name for the data sheet was an easy choice — “Shrooms.” Like us, Eastern Box Turtles are omnivores…whose motto seems to be “If it’s at my level, and fits in my mouth, I’ll give it a try.”  In addition to mushrooms, they’re known to dine on mayapple fruits, fallen fruits of persimmon, pawpaw, wild grapes, and meatier slugs and worms.

Some of the turtles have scars on their shells, perhaps indicating a predator such as Eastern Coyote or River Otter attempting to eat them. Eastern Box Turtles, true to their name, have a unique superpower to elude predators – they can close up their shells tightly like a box.  We do occasionally find bleached turtle shells at Southern 8ths that may have been prey or died of other causes.

Photo lead image: Jim Lynch, National Park Service – Wikimedia Commons