How Do You Tell The Sex Of A Turtle?
With some animals it is easy to distinguish males and females. It’s hard to miss the antlers of a stag deer or the mane of a male lion. Turtles, on the other hand, don’t have obvious gender differences. In fact it’s virtually impossible to tell the sex of a turtle until it is close to being an adult (about 3 to 5 years of age). Just to make things more complicated, the sex characteristics vary from one species of turtle to the next! There are some features that apply to turtles in general, though. This guide describes these characteristics, along with a few examples of species-specific indicators. Determine which species the turtle belongs to. Use a guidebook or online database (see Resources below) to help you identify the species. It’s also important to see if the turtle is full-grown, since the only way to tell the sex of a juvenile is to do a blood test and/or other sophisticated scientific analysis. Start with the turtle’s plastron (lower shell). The plastron of a female turtle wi
