Reptile Fact Sheet-Species name

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Additional Information

Glossary

	Red-eared Slider Trachemys scripta elegans
Red-eared sliders are Texas’s most common aquatic turtles. These turtles get their name from a broad red stripe behind their eye and their habit of sliding off rocks and logs when startled. Older turtles are often covered with a thick coat of algae.


Abundance: Common urban reptile Height: 5 to 11 inches Weight: Varies General description: Aquatic, cold-blooded, omnivore	Range:
A medium sized turtle with a dark green oval shell, marked with yellow in younger turtles, green legs with thin yellow stripes and a green head with a red stripe behind the eye.

Sexual maturity : 5 years
Mating season: March through July. Females produce up to 3 clutches of eggs each year.
Gestation: Eggs hatch in 60-75 days, or overwinter and hatch in the spring.
Number of young: 4-23 from oval, white eggs with leathery shells
Lifespan: Some live more than 30 years.
Diet: Aquatic plants, small fish and decaying material.

Sliders are cold-blooded and spend much of the day sunning on rocks and logs. The young turtles are eaten by a variety of predators including birds, raccoons, alligators and large fish. Sliders bury themselves in loose soil or mud during the winter to escape the cold.

Red-eared sliders are found in most permanent slow-moving water sources with mud bottoms in the eastern three quarters of the state. When population numbers get high, these turtles move across land to other bodies of water in search of food and space.

Baby red-eared sliders were once very popular as children’s pets until it was discovered that some of them carried the disease, salmonella. It is now illegal to sell sliders less than 4 inches in diameter. Most wild animals make very poor pets and are best observed in their native habitat.

Sliders enjoy laying in the sun for hours at a time. If there are not enough rocks or logs for all of them they will often stack themselves 2 or 3 layers deep!
Female turtles lay their eggs in holes that they dig in the ground and leave. Young turtles are born having to take care of themselves.
A turtle’s shell is actually made up of its ribs joined together and covered with a thin layer of skin. Each of the ribs is made of jigsaw-like sections called scutes which grow at the edges. This allows the turtle to increase in size without outgrowing its shell.
Mature males have long toenails on their front feet that they use when courting females. The males swim backwards in front of females and fan water over their faces.
Sliders have poor hearing but are very sensitive to vibrations. This makes it hard to sneak up on them.
Their name, slider, comes from the fact that they are quick to slide off of rocks, logs or the banks if danger threatens.
Legend has it that many Indian tribesbelieved that the land on which they lived was the back of a huge “mother turtle,” floating in a vast sea. Turtles were considered sacred and never killed. The thirteen pieces on some turtle’s shells are thought to represent the thirteen moons of the year.

Glossary
aquatic - living in water
cold-blooded - animal whose body temperature is the same as, or nearly the same as the animal's surroundings
habitat - place where an animal or plant naturally lives or grows
omnivore - animal that eats both plants and other animals
predator - organism that feeds on other animals
salmonella - a bacteria that causes food poisoning
scutes - large bony plates

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Red-eared Slider Trachemys scripta elegans

Red-eared Slider
Trachemys scripta elegans