Sex Changing Turtle!

[Graham]

I've had to revise my sig as one of my turts appears to have changed sex!

I've always believed that my Florida Red Belly, who I got from Athravan last April as a rehomer, is a female. It's history is unknown to me and I estimated the age at that time as about 3 or 4 years, just from the size which isn't a very reliable method but was the best I could do.

It showed all the signs of being a female, but recently things have changed, I first noticed a couple of months ago that the tail appeared to have grown longer and fatter which got me thinking, now I've been checking over my turts as I've just come back from a week on holiday and I'm quite convinced.

The tail has definitely grown, it's much fatter at the base, and most noticeably the cloaca is now a good 1/4" beyond the rear edge of the carapace which it definitely wasn't before, and that's a pretty sure sign of a male.

The front claws haven't grown really long yet but that usually follows later, I'm sure they look as though they've grown a bit too though.

I'm now thinking that it was at the lower end of my age estimate when I got it, a maximum of 3 years maybe a bit less, so no more than 4 now. If that's right then these changes would be taking place at roughly the right time for a turt that has developed at a normal rate.

It just goes to show how difficult it can be to sex them with any accuracy even when they are a few years old.

[tortlady]

graham, maybe he was of getting a sex change while you were on your hols

[amandy]

Had u named it? if so may have to have a rethink

[Graham]

My wife named it Temple when we thought it was female, after Shirley Temple, but Temple is fairly gender neutral I suppose, more so than Shirley would have been anyway!

I've more or less given up on naming the turts as I've got more of them, I can easily tell them all apart, but would never remember which name applied to which turt!