When Ann Berry Somers was 7 years old and growing up in North Carolina, she encountered a box turtle on a path. She picked up the small reptile and looked into its eyes. Instead of retreating into its ...

The three-toed box turtle is one of the most common turtles motorists will encounter in The Natural State. Two species of box turtle occur in the state, the three-toed and the ornate, the latter of ...

When Ann Berry Somers was 7 years old and growing up in North Carolina, she encountered a box turtle on a path. She picked up the small reptile and looked into its eyes. Instead of retreating into its ...

Imagine that your body is 10 times the size of your limbs. Each of your four legs are short, thick, round and tipped with long narrow claws. Your body is also your home that you carry around with you ...

As a budding naturalist growing up in the concrete-heavy environs of Boston, I would regularly thumb through my family’s collection of nature books and daydream about the creatures within. One species ...

In cartoons, when a turtle is spooked, it retreats into and closes up its shell. While used for comic effect, this imagery is based in fact — although not all turtles are capable of this protective ...

Cartoons often suggest turtles wear shells like removable armor. Those stories show turtles stepping out, swapping shells, or treating them like clothing. Biology disagrees. A turtle shell is not an ...