The activity of the afternoon was identifying a small turtle I found in Nessa and Lodo’s cage as I was delivering their hay and water. As you can see in relation to my hand, it wasn’t a large turtle.
I got these shots so I could reference the book after I released him. I then went in and got Julian C. Lee’s A Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Maya World and identified him (or perhaps her, since I didn’t see the tail which is how the sexes are differentiated), and narrowed it down to some sort of mud turtle.
However, in the Lee book, I discovered that in order to identify the specific species of mud turtle, you have to get a look at the underside, so Recona helped me find him again so I could snap this picture.
I’m still not sure, but my guess is the Scorpion Mud Turtle, which was my first guess because of the colors on the head, although it turns out that all the mud turtles can have those colors. These pictures are on page 152 of the Lee book.
1 comment:
Yeah, mud turtle is my guess too.
Good to eat? Looks too small to me.
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