#Florida softshell

[everythingunderthesky]

Warning: No pancake stacking.

Turtle behavior info found on Reptifiles!

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[vintagewildlife]

Florida softshell turtle By: Sullivan & Rogers From: The Complete Encyclopedia of the Animal World 1980

[infodumpingaboutnature]

Merry belated Christmas everyone!!! I’ve been wanting to make a post for a while now but things have been pretty hectic between coming back from my trip to Florida and helping my family with last minute preparations for Christmas. After that my brain needed a few days to just be goop but I’m back now and want to talk about something pretty cool! So while I was in Florida me and my bf went to go visit this wetlands called Green Cay where you can walk around a board walk and see some pretty cool birds and reptiles. The day we went was pretty cold and cloudy (it was like that for most of the time I was there) so that meant there weren’t many reptiles out but it also meant there weren’t many people there either so we got to see a lot of really cool birds!

As soon as we pulled up to the parking lot we were seeing birds such as blue jays, northern mocking birds, common grackles (of course), a red-bellied woodpecker, mourning doves, and a bunch of squirrels. I know none of those species are rare so it makes sense that I would see them but I think it’s so cool to see species that I’m used to like blue jays, squirrels, and woodpeckers hanging out in palm trees.

(Red-Bellied Woodpecker)

Next, we went into the visitor center where they had a few exhibits with animals. The first was a display about native frogs Vs invasive frogs that had Cuban tree frogs and cane toads for the invasive species and green tree frogs, pig frogs, and southern toads for the natives. Sadly, I could only find the Cuban tree frog, cane toad, and pig frog since the glass was super foggy and the frogs like to hide anyways. They also had an American kestrel named Kilee and an Eastern screech owl named Oliver in little flight cages. Both birds were born in the wild but now have injuries that prevent them from flying so they have to live the rest of their lives at the center. The sign said Oliver had been hit by a car and for Kilee it just said she had problems with her wing feathers so idk what happened to her. There was also two tanks one that had turtles (peninsula cooters, Florida softshell, and Florida red-bellied) and a second tank that had some baby American Alligators.

(Pig frog, Cuban tree frog, Kilee the American kestrel, Oliver the Eastern screech owl, peninsula cooter, and American alligator babies)

In the actual park we saw lots of cool species since there weren’t many people out. Like I said no alligators though since it was pretty cold out but we did see plenty of iguanas, a massive Florida Softshell in the water, and a basilisk lizard sitting in a tree!

(Large male green iguana and either a brown basilisk or a green basilisk who isn’t showing off his coloration we couldn’t tell)

That’s all the pics I can add to this post so I’m gonna make a part 2 with all the birds we saw.

[ash-apalone-ferox]

Ok so this is Asher and Alexander I really like how Alexander turns out and he's my first male oc for this fandom lol I don't know why but I just seem to like designing girls

Here are Ashers or Alexanders links with just them and their stuff if they have any

[secretjardins]

“Albino Florida Softshell Turtle” by Forlurn

[theworldoutsidethecave]

[hyperfixation-floodgate]

What kind of creatures reside in the murky, mucky storm water retention pond at my work?

One of the world's smallest! The Least Killifish is the smallest live-bearing fish in the world! They live alongside a zillion Eastern Mosquitofish and possibly some other species I haven't caught yet to identify.

A bunch of softies! I see softshell turtles a lot, butI haven't looked up what species they are yet.

Giant, hella invasive fish! (Plecostomas added a while ago to control algae. They do not) Thankfully, the pond does not directly output to any other bodies of water, even if it floods, and it has a fish fry control grate on the overflow outlet for the grass carp that were recently added.

Gators!! Mainly small ones, safely growing bigger away from the adults. I see them basking or floating almost every day. I stumbled on this guy napping while I took a walk.

I recently got up enough courage to offer to help take care of the pond, which has an immensely thick layer of muck on the bottom and so little oxygen that the fish hang out in a few shallow channels most of the time.

To my surprise, management happily agreed and is giving me everything I requested to take care of it, including a nice aerator and hundreds of dollars of beneficial bacteria tablets. Even my suggestions to change the landscaping routine and plant native pond plants were enthusiastically accepted.

After being fired from a well paying job because I dared to ask for (completely free, barely visible) disability accommodations, this event is mind blowing to me.

[lshedra-blog]

Florida Soft Shell Turtle Bedding by Lutfi Shedraway Via Flickr: On a very, very rare occasions, these types of turtles emerges from the water, I had such a rare occasion. She dugged a hole to lay her eggs and that is for the most of the times when these type of turtles are seen outside water bodies. They like swamps and they like to submerge most of the times, only sneaking enough to breath air. They like calm waters vs currents/flowing water. Its named Florida Softshell Turtle because, they are hardly found outside Florida and they have leather like soft shells vs. the hard shells, other turtles are known for. The Florida Softshell turtle is almost entirely aquatic, only emerging from the water to bask or to lay eggs. In the water, it prefers to bury itself in the sandy/muddy substrate. Like all Softshell turtles, it is very fast-moving in water. While this species is omnivorous, its diet consists largely of meat, consuming mainly fish, insects, crustaceans, frogs and mollusks. It may also scavenge.

[berrymeter]

idk if i should advertise comms on FA when i get back from the zoo or later... cuz i will be a little sploded from this whole Awake thing

[amnhnyc]

Sunshine State residents, do you recognize this little neighbor? It’s the Florida softshell turtle (Apalone ferox)! Unlike many turtles, you might find this critter darting about on land or swimming rapidly in water. Its hydrodynamic, flattened shell, and four strongly-webbed feet help it to move swiftly. Softshells stick mostly to water and have long necks and snouts that they poke above the surface, like a snorkel, to breathe. Juveniles have more contrasting color patterns than adults: their carapace, or shell, can be olive, tan, or light brown with spots and a yellow rim.

Photo: kimberry, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

[herpsandbirds]

I dunno about you but I love spiny softshell turtles! I saw a baby one once (maybe 2 inch diameter shell?) in a nearby river and have been enamored since. Even wrote a short story about it for a nature writing class :)

I've kept them in aquaria for one of my jobs, and every time I go to a local park, near my best friends house, there are huge softshells i get to see every time.

Here's one of my favorite softshells...

Florida Softshell (Apalone ferox), hatchling, family Trionychidae, Florida, USA

photograph via: https://theturtlesource.com/

[internetdruid]

Is Petri Dish a spiny softshell? He’s just a lil baby, I know that already

He's a Florida softshell! and also a little baby, yes.

[infodumpingaboutnature]

Me and my bf just helped a Florida Softshell Turtle (Apalone ferox) cross the road in his neighborhood.

They have really long necks so you have to hold them from the back so you don’t get bit, but this beauty was surprisingly calm while we moved her towards the pond that she was heading to. There’s a couple ponds in community and it was trying to go from one to another but it needed to cross the road but luckily was found by a group of neighbor kids who called my bf to help since he’s known as the reptile guy in his neighborhood.

I hope this beautiful girl has a happy life and that she doesn’t need to cross anymore roads or if she does she has someone to help her. 🐢

[arminreindl]

Back to older art. These are giant softshell turtles found in the Eocene Drazinda Formation of Pakistan. On the left is Drazinderetes (Greek for Drazinda Rower), known from a bony carapace 0.8 meters long. On the right, an indetermined softshell turtle that may or may not belong to the same species, but is only known from a plastron element. This might correspond to a bony shell 1.2 meters long. As you can see there are some big difference between the lower estimate and the upper estimate, which has a lot of free space. This is because in different softshell turtles there's difference ratios between the bony and the soft shell parts. The lower estimate is based on Apalone softshell turtles, which have only 20% cartilage on the shell, while the upper is based on the Malayan softshell which has up to 45% cartilage in addition to the bone. First image Apalone ferox (Florida softshell) by Johnskate17 on Wikimedia Second image Dogania subplana (Malayan softshell) by Wibowo Djatmiko on Wikimedia

Drazinderetes lived during the Eocene in what is now Pakistan in the Drazinda Formation. This is interesting as this formation preserves a marine environment, meaning that in the absence of evidence that the fossils were washed out at sea, Drazinderetes might have been a marine animal. This would match its enormous size, as most giant turtle species have been marine (not counting those of Miocene South America). Although this would make it the first known fully marine softshell until evidence of the contrary is found, modern softshells are known to occasionally enter saltwater. Drazinderetes shared its environment with crocodiles similar to Asiatosuchus, early manatee relatives in the form of Protosiren and primitive whales related to Basilosaurus. The following reconstructions have both been made by @knuppitalism-with-ue during his paleoart streams.

[krisanthimum]

Random hc time

Donnie's clutch came from a type of softshell native to Florida, so Donnie naturally runs colder than his brothers. Being that he needs more heat to be warm than the others he's the one who wears clothes the most! (Also cause comfy)

The reason he doesn't wear any when they're out and about is bc the clothes block up his movement in battle, plus the sweat from all the running around is a sensory ick.

I think all of them are sensitive to temperature, Mikey being the warmest for a variety of reasons, but baseline they all run colder than Splinter or April by a good few degrees.

After learning this though, Leo proceeded to never leave Donnie alone about being from Florida, narrating 'Florida Man' headlines of what he's doing just to piss him off.

Leo (in announcer voice): Local Florida Man loses his glasses in the fridge after 72 hours playing mad scientist!

Donnie (half awake remembering slider habitats): Go back to your swamp Shrek

[mxalmighty]

a trio of turts on paper bc i haven't been happy with my digital art lately at all but my pencil sketches are comin' out okay i guess

i am completely normal for these turtles okay

Leo and Raph are drawn without references, Donnie is a screenshot redraw from the savage raph episode

a few rambling things to note about how i've started to hc these turts, because it may at some point become relevant idk; > rise!leo is ftm trans and bi- this is rarely gonna be relevant in my art but eh, maybe i'll do pride arts at some point. i'll probably only tag relevant art though > i like to make poor raph suffer with my hc's and i honestly can't explain it, maybe he's just too cute and my squish response is triggered- but the boy has gigantism, and it doesn't do him any favors. i love giant raph but let's be real, that's gotta be rough on the internals. i imagine as he gets older and thus bigger, he gets slower and more hindered by this condition, at least until his awesome family finds a fix > i draw donnie's nose different from all the others bc one of the ways to tell apart a spiny softshell vs a smooth or florida softshell is their nostrils and i just appreciate that okay > also post-movie donnie probably can't stand the feeling of anything softly or gently touching him so kiss that shirt goodbye it's probably skin-tight and weighted everything after that. give donnie weighted blankets with rough textures he would honestly probably appreciate it > if raph can't have markings that glow, give him MORE SPIKES >(