how to tell the gender of a baby turtle

This article was co-authored by Pippa Elliott, MRCVS. If you keep pet turtles, it's nice to know if you've got boys or girls. References You can also inspect the turtle’s tail to guess what sex the turtle is. But it's not easy to tell a baby sea turtle's gender as they aren't sexually mature until around 10 years old. Male turtles have a concave (curved in) plastron while females have a flat one. ", and the sun or painted turtle. You may assume that a turtle is male due to a smaller size when it actually has more growing to do. The underside part of the turtle’s shell is called the carapace. It's hard to determine the gender of a baby painted turtle (Chrysemys picta). Feel the bottom of your turtle's shell. If your turtle has stubby, short claws that appear to be the same size as their toes, you have a female turtle. In some species, it's easy to tell male from female turtles just by their body shape. Here are the tank sizes you require according to its shell length. Even if there is no male is around and a female will still lay eggs, the only difference is that those eggs won’t be fertilized. Adult female painted turtles are bigger than the males, with typical plastron -- or bottom shell -- lengths of between roughly 4 and 5 inches. Male Mississippi map turtles grow from about 3 1/2 inches to about 5 inches long, measuring along the shell from the head to the tail. Approved. What does the shell look like for a male and female? Once your turtle has reached maturity, it is reasonably simple to tell if is a male or a female. The male turtle's front claws are longer and more curved than a female's of the same species. The plastron can be used as a good pointer for understanding the gender of a turtle. Rub the shell. He is great. It's pretty cool, we weren't looking for turtles, just happen to run into them. ", "Descriptions and pictures on how to tell the sex of my turtle helped. Not only, "I've had my turtle almost 10 years, and didn't know if it was male or female. Please help us continue to provide you with our trusted how-to guides and videos for free by whitelisting wikiHow on your ad blocker. Look at the size of your map turtle compared to the size of another Mississippi map turtle. Recent experiments using a harmless biopsy from a turtle's gonad region could change the way scientists track the birth rates of species lacking sexual dimorphism. ", I first got my turtle I didn't know how to handle it. If you're not sure what conclusion to draw, wait until the turtle is older and try again. ", "Using this site, I was able to determine the sexes of my friend's two turtles! The shell underneath the tortoise is called the plastron. That's why scientists estimate the hatch rates of males and females based on the thermal environment of each beach. Taking care of a female turtle that is about to lay eggs is not very hard, you barely have to do anything, so don’t worry about this part. When, "By a lake we are at there is a snapping turtle, and the family wanted to know what gender the turtle was. Also, the male has soft ridges on the front edge of the shell. ", "The detailed characteristics like tail size and shell shapes helped. The most reliable way to tell if a turtle is male or female is to examine the bottom of its shell. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. Although females dig in the sand to bury their eggs, males need their long claws to defend a territory and gain traction when mating with a female. Remember 10 gallons for every inch of turtle. It may help to look at a diagram of the vent on a turtle's tail in a picture. Eventually, however, curiosity prevails and they want to know. Determining the gender of young Star tortoises is not always straightforward because most of the gender characteristics apply to subadult and adult tortoises only. Research shows that if a turtle's eggs incubate below 81.86 Fahrenheit, the turtle hatchlings will be male. The female's cloaca is rounder and more star-shaped than the male's. ", "I find wikiHow very useful, and this article was also, as always, very helpful. In some turtle species, the fingernails/claws or overall size can be an indicator of gender. Female turtles have a short tail, which generally doesn’t extend more than 10 cm (4 inches) past the edge of the carapace. The appearance of the shell is more heavily influenced by external, environmental factors than by gender. The male has a shell that is much lighter in colour than that of the female, whose shell grows darker with age. The differences between male and female turtles can be subtle and are easier to spot if you have one turtle of each sex so that you can compare. There are a number of companies these days that collect the samples of your DNA via mail which can be used to tell your baby’s gender, that too within a span of a week. Both male and female red-eared sliders are colorful as babies but turn a muddy brown as they age. (This turtle looks like a female.) 8 Ways to tell whether a Turtle is Male or Female - YouTube Although long fingernails are common on the female of the human species, in turtles, the opposite is true. There are some variations of sea turtles (specifically, the Kemp Ridley, but there may be others) that have no external signs of which gender they are. I have used kiddy pools and plastic pond liners from most nurseries and now a 150 gal pond. This should, "This helped me more than any other site I have looked at to determine if I have female or male turtles! It seems much more fun to know to handle my turtle, and I know much more than I did. Baby sea turtles don't have x or y chromosomes that determine their gender. Females, on the other hand, have flat-bottomed shells. ", "It helped me discover that my family's turtle is a boy. ", "Helped me determine that my turtle is a male. While you can count rings on the turtle's belly, that method is often a better representation of when the turtle had food and when it didn't. This article is very informative and useful. This trait is also present on the box turtles and some semi aquatic water turtles. Saunders, {"smallUrl":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/images\/thumb\/0\/01\/Tell-If-a-Turtle-Is-Male-or-Female-Step-2.jpg\/v4-460px-Tell-If-a-Turtle-Is-Male-or-Female-Step-2.jpg","bigUrl":"\/images\/thumb\/0\/01\/Tell-If-a-Turtle-Is-Male-or-Female-Step-2.jpg\/aid9847-v4-728px-Tell-If-a-Turtle-Is-Male-or-Female-Step-2.jpg","smallWidth":460,"smallHeight":345,"bigWidth":728,"bigHeight":546,"licensing":"