Description: Usually 4 ½ - 5 inches long. It doesn’t depend entirely on their toes – they sometimes have four. Concavity in plastron of males very shallow or absent. A marked tendency for pattern to be replaced by plain olive or horn colored areas; plastron often plain yellow or horn – colored. Orange and yellow spots usually conspicuous on both head and forelimbs.

Habitat/Range: Found in woodlands and thickets ranging from Montana to Texas and South Central Alabama

Behavior: Essentially terrestrial, they still sometimes soak themselves by the hour in mud or water. During hot, dry weather, they burrow beneath logs or rotting vegetation. Summer showers usually bring them out of hiding.

Diet: Omnivorous. Chiefly carnivorous when young, more herbivorous with age. Eats snails, worms, insects, spiders, frogs, snakes, lizards, small mammals, carrion and plants.

Reproduction: 3-8 elliptical white eggs are laid in flask-shaped nests in light soil. Several clutches are laid each year. Normally 75-90 days incubation are needed before hatching. Box turtles can live 20-30 years.

Status in the wild: North American box turtles are listed by CITES as a threatened species. Numbers are decreasing because of shrinking habitat, low clutch size and high hatchling mortality. Permits for export and import are required. Many states protect their native box turtles and do not allow collection.

Bibliography:
1. Ernst, Carl and Barbour, Roger. 1989. Turtles of the World, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., pp. 194-196.

Works Cited:
Conant, Roger, and Joseph T. Collins. Peterson Field Guides - Reptiles and Amphibians. 3rd edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. Print.