Identifying Turtle Breeds

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm James from Reptile Rescue Service in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is actually a little bit of a touchy type thing. You would actually be better getting a book, and dealing with the species that you're interested in. So if you're looking for land turtles, tortoises, I would advise you to get, like, a Petersen's or a Stebbin's field guide. This covers a lot of different turtles and tortoises. Desert tortoises, and desert tortoises, they actually have elephant-type feet, massive toes or claws, and up their legs you'll see really thick, massive spurs to help 'em dig and break the earth apart, 'cause they do burrow in the ground. If it's an aquatic turtle, they would have more of a web foot, because they swim in the water. They don't always live in the water, they'll climb out. Stay up on a log or something for hours. And they go back in the water. Some of these different signs that you look at 'em, you can tell and see. So once again, a desert tortoise would be more like an elephant-type footing on the back, big spurs on the front to help burrow, and the aquatic turtles would have webbed feet. Okay, this red-foot one here that's walking, has a....this is a red foot tortoise, and this one has red legs if you can see that from here. It has a red head. That's one way of identifying it. There's also the yellow foot, which has yellow running down it's front legs, too."