North American Common Eastern Musk Stinkpot Turtle Habitats Are Watery

Summary: North American common eastern musk stinkpot turtle habitats are watery, weedy, woody plains to Atlantic coasts in east United States and southeast Canada.

common eastern musk turtle (Sternotherus odoratus); southeastern Ontario, east central Canada; Sunday, June 19, 2011, 23:03: Ontley, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

North American common eastern musk stinkpot turtle habitats are grassy, herbaceous, watery, weedy, woody areas in eastern United States and southeastern Canada, from the eastern Great Plains eastward to the Atlantic coast.

Stinkpot turtles bear their common name because of two-paired musk glands that bathe bullies in bad-colored, bad-scented, bad-textured secretions from beneath carapaces (from Spanish carapacho, “shell”]). They carry the scientific name Sternotherus odoratus (from Greek στέρνον, “breastbone” and θήρ [“animal, beast”] and -ῐον [“little”] via θηρίον and from Latin odōrātus, “odor, smell”). Scientific descriptions by Pierre André Latreille (Nov. 29, 1762-Feb. 6, 1833) decided the designation Testudo odorata (from Latin testa [“earthenware, shell fragment”] via testūdō, “tortoise, turtle”).

Common eastern musk stinkpot turtle life cycles expect muddy-bottomed canals, lakes, ponds and swamps with emergent, floating, submerged and waterside vegetation, muskrat lodges and rotting wood.

Spring and fall or one season, not the other, breeding, mating and nesting between February and October fit between mating underwater and 65- to 86-day incubations.

Ghastly secretions and vegetated-water dives guard Testudines (from Latin testūdō, "turtle" and Greek -ηνός via Latin –īnus, “of”) order’s Kinosternidae mud and musk turtle family members. Secretion-hurtling kinosternids (from Greek κῑνέω [“to move”], στέρνον [“breastbone”] and -ειδής [“-like”] via Latin -idæ) hunker onto floating trunks and vegetation to have higher body-temperature hunts. Long necks incline as far backward and sideward as hind limbs increase the likelihood of inflicting injurious bites when diving or stink-bombing is not an option.

Predatory bullfrogs, fisher cats, foxes, large fishes, large wading birds, raccoons, raptors, skunks, snapping turtles and watersnakes jeopardize North American common eastern musk stinkpot turtle habitats.

People collecting aquarium, research and zoo species, developing Atlantic and Gulf coastlines, drilling offshore, littering plastics and operating watercraft kindle stinkpot turtles’ biting, hiding, stink-bombing self-defenses.

Leaf litter or maximally 4-inch- (10-centimeter-) deep humus or soft-dirt nests annually lodge one to two northern and one to four southern 1- to 9-egg clutches. Miasmatic embryos in brittle, elliptical, off-white, porcelain-like, thick-shelled, translucent 0.9- to 1.2- by 0.5- to 0.7-inch (22- to 31-millimeter by 13- to 17-millimeter) eggs menace predators. Triangular cross-sectioned, 0.8-inch- (27-millimeter-) long hatchlings need to negotiate whatever niches and nooks need navigating to nestle among nearest water-body baby, juvenile and mature turtle numbers.

North American common eastern musk stinkpot turtle habitats offer season-coldest temperatures from northernmost minus 40 to southernmost 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 40 to 4.44 degrees Celsius).

Stinkpot turtles pursue basking on 7-foot- (2-meter-) high trunks and foraging dead and living, water-bottom clams, crabs, crayfish, earthworms, fish, fish eggs, insects, snails and tadpoles.

Three- to five-, five-plus-year-old males and five- to 11-, 11-plus-year-old females queue algae-layered, elongated, high-domed, oval, smooth, 3- to 5.4-inch- (7.6- to 13.7-centimeter-) long, three-keeled carapaces. Maturity reveals chin and throat barbels (sensory-organ whiskers, from Latin barba, “beards”); double-striped, long-necked heads; and broad, short tails blunt-horned in males, sometimes sharp-horned in females. Juveniles show dark-, irregular-keeled, patterned, spotted, streaked carapaces even as mature stinkpots sustain 11-scuted (plated, from Latin scūtum, “shield”) upper-shell sides to one-hinged, 11-scuted lower-shell plastrons.

North American common eastern musk stinkpot turtle habitats trigger, when threatened, stink-bombs tossed from between brown-gray-olive upper-shell carapaces with non-serrated rear margins and brown-yellow lower-shell plastrons.

range map for common eastern musk stinkpot turtle (Sternotherus odoratus); Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011, 12:41: Map of USA without state names.svg: Angr; derivative work: Gigillo83, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

common eastern musk turtle (Sternotherus odoratus); southeastern Ontario, east central Canada; Sunday, June 19, 2011, 23:03: Ontley, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stinkpot_Turtle.jpg

range map for common eastern musk stinkpot turtle (Sternotherus odoratus); Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011, 12:41: Map of USA without state names.svg: Angr; derivative work: Gigillo83, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sternotherus_Odoratus_diffusion.svg

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