Types of Land Turtles
Although most types of turtles live in an aquatic environment there are some species in the United States and abroad that spend the majority of their time on land. Some of these are tortoises, which are similar to turtles in many respects but have thicker skin and lack the webbed feet that water turtles have. Turtles and tortoises are reptiles and belong to two different divisions of the order called Chelonia.
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Desert Tortoise
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The desert tortoise is native to the Sonoran and Mojave Desert regions of the American Southwest. The adults weigh between eight and ten pounds and their top shell, also termed a carapace, varies between nine and 15 inches in length. Desert Tortoises spend much of the day burrowed in the ground to avoid the extreme heat. Desert tortoises can go without water for over a year and get most of their water from the plant life they consume. Desert tortoises have federal protection across their range, with it being illegal to touch one or collect one as a pet.
Box Turtles
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Box turtles acquired their name from the fact that their bottom shell, known as the plastron, has a sort of hinge. This feature lets the box turtle pull in its feet, head and tail and close its shell to avoid danger, with the upper shell presses tight to the lower shell. There are various species of box turtle in the United States such as the ornate box turtle, the eastern box turtle and the three-toed box turtle. Most are smallish reptiles between four and eight inches long that inhabit grasslands and forests.
Gopher Tortoise
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The gopher tortoise is a native tortoise of the southeastern portion of the nation. They prefer sandy dunes, pastures and pine forests where the soil is not completely dry. Gopher tortoises are skilled diggers, burrowing in the ground for distances up to 50 feet in some instances. This species eats over one thousand types of plants in the region where it lives, with grasses of all kinds a staple of their diet.
Wood Turtles
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Wood turtles are a mainly terrestrial turtle that lives in the Northeast and into Canadian Provinces such as Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec. The wood turtle is an omnivore, with both plants and animals on its menu. It likes to eat snails, slugs, worms and leeches in addition to the vegetable matter it encounters. The wood turtle will go in the water to find food but spends most of its time on dry land. Raccoons, opossums, skunks and birds are its natural predators, eating the eggs before the young develop as well as the smaller juveniles.
Others
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There are a number of tortoise species across the world that live exclusively on land. The Galapagos tortoise exists in that island chain in the Pacific off the coast of South America and can live for as long as 150 years. The radiated tortoise of Madagascar has a pattern on its carapace that gives it its name and weighs as much as 40 pounds. The Russian tortoise of the Middle East and Russia lives in dry grassy regions and is small at just two pounds. Other types of these land dwellers include the leopard tortoise, the Greek tortoise, the marginated tortoise and the red-footed tortoise.
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