Scientific Name: Clemmys guttata

Identification: Their broad, smooth, low dark-colored upper shell, or carapace, ranges in its exact colour from black to a bluish black with a number of yellow tiny round spots. The spotting patterning extends from the head, to the neck and out onto the limbs. Spots can always be found on the head, neck, and limbs. The bottom shell is yellow or orange-yellow and a black spot is present on each scute; however, with age, melanism of the plastron increases until the entire thing is black. Regarding the geographical variation in spots, southern individuals tend to have smaller and less conspicuous spots than those of individuals from farther north. Hatchlings resemble the adults closely. Consistently, each segment of the upper shell has only one yellow spot.

Range: The range extends from southern Maine and extreme southern Ontario west to Illinois and south to northern Florida in the east. Isolated colonies can be found in southern Quebec, southern Ontario, central Illinois, central Georgia and northcentral Florida.

Diet: Diet consists of snails, worms, slugs, and spiders. In captivity the spotted will consume the same as their diet in the wild. The hatchlings and the younger turtle will eat just about anything you will hand them, so snail, worms (red wigglers) (night Crawlers), crickets, other insects, and aquatic vegetation and veggies. Also, spotteds love Reptomin and Mazuri.

Spotted turtles are very poor swimmers so if the water depth is over 1 inch, plants, sticks, leaves or mosses should be used to fill empty spaces in the water giving them something to grab onto to pull themselves to the top for air.

These are very intelligent turtles and have been tested like the Wood Turtles in mazes and have been proven to have the brain capacity of a mouse.

The spotted turtle can be decidedly terrestrial, spending a good amount of time on land and sometimes basking on patches of grass near its body of water.

Unlike most other turtles, males and females can be told apart from birth. The male spotted turtle has a tan chin, brown eyes, and a long, thick tail. The chin of the female is yellow; she also has orange eyes and a shorter tail than the male. In addition, the bottom shell of males is concave while it is either flat or convex in females. On average, females grow to be slightly larger than males.  Also, females have more spots than males (on average).