Why Do Red Eared Sliders Bite Each Other?
fact checked & review by
Dr. Partho Kumar Shaha
Veterinarian (DVM)
The information is current and up-to-date in accordance with the latest veterinarian research.
Red eared sliders are one of the most interesting creatures in the world. Coming with so many unique characteristics like shaking their claws, biting each other is one of them. They do this kind of thing for various reasons.
Reasons For Biting each other:
- Showing dominance (in males)
- Rejection of mating (in females)
- When they starve
- Territorial Protection
Showing Dominance:
When a male slider shakes his hand towards the female for starting the mating process and begins to touch her, if the female rejects this proposal, she begins to bite the male ones.
Rejection of mating:
The other one is the dominance or social status issue. For creating higher social status, male sliders often fight among each other with claws and by biting. But generally, as turtles are very polite animals, they barely hurt each other.
When they starve:
In case of a shortage of food, turtles eat one another. But it is a rare issue. During lack of food, the elder ones ate up the younger pond turtles.
Territorial Protection:
Whenever their area is attacked by any other prey like crocodiles, they unitedly try to stop them by biting and fighting.
Can Two Red Eared Sliders Live Together?
Well, the answer is yes, but only if there is enough space inside the tank. As mentioned earlier turtles are very polite animals. They barely hurt each other until it is really necessary. Unlike some stubborn species, one can easily keep two different turtles in one tank provided that the tank is big enough for both of them.
Disclaimer: You can’t keep fishes with turtles underwater as a red eared slider will literally eat up all the fish around it.
Do Turtles Bully Each Other?
Not really! It might happen in case they are really pissed up or something like that. Means when they are hungry or sexually unhappy they sometimes quarrel and fight with each other. It can be seen in both males and females.
As we mentioned earlier, turtles like to keep calm always. Any sort of crowd, they try to avoid it actually!
How wise are turtles?
If we look biologically, turtles are reptiles. So, they are not as intelligent as other chordates! But it varies from species to species. Some turtles are highly organized compared to other reptiles. They have such a good brain that they can solve some really tough challenges like crossing through a maze and more.
Why Do Turtles Tap Each Other?
Mainly this is a male characteristic. They do this with claws or hands to show affection over females to take them for mating. This taping is also a very clear difference between males and females. So, one can easily identify their gender with this technique.
How Do Turtles Play With Each Other?
Well, there are many things turtles find really enjoyable. They often get bored so one needs to set up something interesting for them. They really enjoy it to find out their own food.
If there is any sort of maze, they like to solve it. One can change their surroundings which they will find really cool! Also, they love swimming, foraging, etc. a lot.
Finally…
We can say that, red eared sliders are one of the most amazing creatures one can ever see! Our duty is to know more about their lifestyle and habits and give them that space to live and balance the ecology.
Our site is full of things that will help you to know literally everything about turtles. So, visit regularly to get updates about turtles.
About Author
Muntaseer Rahman started keeping pet turtles back in 2013. He also owns the largest Turtle & Tortoise Facebook community in Bangladesh. These days he is mostly active on Facebook.