Eastern Box Turtle
The hinged lower shell closes like a box, all the way shut. North American, long lived past fifty, and it holds to one patch of ground for life.
Overview
The eastern box turtle is a small land turtle of eastern North America with a hinged plastron that lets it shut itself away completely, which is where the name comes from. The shell runs 11 to 18 cm depending on subspecies, and the animal can live a very long time: over a century is believed of some, and one record reaches 138 years.
It is listed as Near Threatened and appears on CITES Appendix II, and wild populations have declined largely through habitat loss and collection.
Temperament
Deliberate, quiet and surprisingly attached to place. A wild box turtle keeps a home range roughly 250 yards across and stays inside it for life, and a turtle moved outside that range will try to walk back and often dies trying.
That single fact is the strongest argument against taking one from a garden or a roadside and keeping it. In captivity they are undemanding animals that learn feeding routines and recognise a keeper, but they never become an animal that wants handling.
Care and grooming
Omnivorous and it changes with age: juveniles are mainly carnivorous, adults mostly herbivorous. Worms, insects, snails, berries, fungi and greens across the year.
Humidity at 60 to 80 percent and damp shade to retreat into. Northern animals hibernate from October or November, burrowing as much as two feet down, and a captive kept indoors year round without that cycle is doing something its body did not evolve for, which is a real trade off rather than a settled question.
Living and exercise
An outdoor pen suits them best: damp shade, deep leaf litter, a shallow pool it can walk into, and sun it can choose. Indoors they need UVB and considerably more floor space than a tank offers.
Nest temperature decides sex, with 22 to 27 C producing males and above 28 C producing females. Anyone incubating eggs is choosing the outcome whether or not they mean to.
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