What Is the Behavior of a Turtle?

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Tim Cole with Austin Reptile Service, I've been keeping reptile amphibians for over forty years and we're going to talk about turtle behavior. After a turtles been kept as pets for a while, one of the things you'll notice is they do react when you come into the room, or come into their pen if they're outside. They relate to you as somebody that's bringing them food. So, they'll usually come running expecting food after you've had them for a while, they've learned the routine. When you're keeping water turtles, if they're not out basking and swimming, and they're being very lethargic and the eyes aren't opening up very much, there's probably a health issue there. Same goes for the land turtles, the tortoises. If they're not bright eyes, and active, and moving around a lot, especially when you show up to feed them, then there's probably a health issue and something needs to be checked. But they should be active, alert. If you're keeping more than one turtle in the pen, they should be interacting with each other. If you have two male tortoises, they're actually going to fight, one of them could kill the other. So, you have to know what sexes they are, you have to know when they're sexually mature, you need to know when to separate them."