Female Ornate Box

Parts of southern Illinois are within the range of ornate box turtles. Smaller areas of Indiana are too, as well as Wisconsin, according to various texts. :)

Its amazing how a species that originaly lives in dry, desert like areas can adapt to these northern areas.

This is the only ornate box I found around here, but I'm still going to keep on the lookout for the lucky male.

What a beautiful turtle! No doubt that it is mostly T.ornata, but it looks like it might have some T.carolina ssp. blood in it. Maybe this is just the local variation of ornata.

That is an intergrade for sure. Here in Texas we sometimes find three toed X ornate crosses in the East Texas area. All box turtles intergrade over much of there range. One type melts into the other as there are no sharp lines between them. If you get any extra offspring let me know. I would be interested in some. She should be fertile for about five years even without a male so long as you let her hibernate. Eric

She has successfuly hibernated in my backyard for the past two years and never laid an egg. I have many three toed box turtles with her, but the males have no interest in her, and I can't find another ornate. I might just have to buy one from the internet eventually.

The problem with cross-species hybrids is that they are often not fertile. This may be true with her, since she appears to be a T.c.triunguis X T.o.ornata. If it were merely subspecies crossing, the chances are more likely that she'd be fertile. It's akin to the liger or tigon...they are usually infertile. Reptiles are different, but you get the idea. It's just a possibility.

For more information on the reptiles that I own you can visit www.freewebs.com/turtle69/ there is not much on there since I just created it, but it will be up dated eventually.