In cartoons, when a turtle is spooked, it retreats into and closes up its shell. While used for comic effect, this imagery is based in fact – although not all turtles are capable of this protective ...

Article by Molly Schafer Photos courtesy of Molly Schafer, Mat Smith, Andy Tocydlowski, Maya Walker, Jim White, Kenneth Geisert and University Archives September 10, 2024 The discovery of a ...

Turtle shells evolved over the course of 300 million years, but self-defense wasn't the initial driver, researchers think.

When Ann Berry Somers was 7 years old and growing up in North Carolina, she encountered a box turtle on a path. She picked up the small reptile and looked into its eyes. Instead of retreating into its ...

As a budding naturalist growing up in the concrete-heavy environs of Boston, I would regularly thumb through my family’s collection of nature books and daydream about the creatures within. One species ...

This year has been a great one for spotting Eastern Box Turtles (Terrapene carolina) in the Andorra Natural Area, the northern end of Wissahickon Park. We had three unique animals sighted: one ...

A musk turtle with algae growing on its shell swims in a tub with red-eared sliders before release. Musk turtles (also called stinkpots) can emit a foul-smelling odor released from glands on their ...

An ambitious long-term study of box turtles seeks to study the population across North Carolina to determine the health of the species over a hundred years. With a story about an animal that inspires ...

Aug. 25 (UPI) --The Missouri Department of Conservation celebrated the 41st birthday of Peanut, a red-eared slider turtle with a unique figure eight-shaped shell. The department celebrated Peanut's ...

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Two Hungarians puzzled by how certain creatures with shells, like turtles and beetles, are able to self-right have developed a shape with one stable and one unstable point of ...