Snapping Turtle Laying Eggs?

[Katie1]

Completely up to you, but I'm sharing with you an idea that I had in case you come across freshly laid turtle nests; I have thought about getting some household ammonia and putting it around the nest if I find a fresh one. This would throw off the scent of the turtle to predators and would likely mimic the scent of urine to a predator

BAD BAD Idea! All that will do is Confuse the babies when they hatch.... Cant find moms sent to water they die trying!

[NJmmadude]

Originally Posted by Katie1

Completely up to you, but I'm sharing with you an idea that I had in case you come across freshly laid turtle nests; I have thought about getting some household ammonia and putting it around the nest if I find a fresh one. This would throw off the scent of the turtle to predators and would likely mimic the scent of urine to a predator

BAD BAD Idea! All that will do is Confuse the babies when they hatch.... Cant find moms sent to water they die trying!

Interesting! I always understood that freshwater turtle hatchlings employed solar and magnetic cues for migration after they hatched. Was this incorrect? I know that salamanders and frogs use olfactory cues for return homing to natal sites, but I've not heard of hatchling turtles using olfactory cues for navigation-could you let me know more or point to some sources? I'd like to learn more about it!

[fisheye]

Many years ago I had one chance to witness a very unusual sight - mating snapping turtles. Picture seeing the Loch Ness monster. From a distance it is very hard to figure out what you are watching. In my sighting two turtles, both approximately 45 pounds, were mating on the surface of a 35 acre lake. They were rolling over and over and it looked more like an alligator in one of it's death rolls. I was in a 12 foot jon boat and my curiosity got the best of me; I had to see what the heck I was watching. As I rowed over I expected Godzilla to raise it's head out of the water at any time! By the way; they never stopped to flee my boat - they seemed very content to keep doing what they were doing.

Close to the lake I made that sighting there is another smaller lake with the remnants of an old peat moss bog operation. Several times I would spot snappers laying eggs in the peat moss piles left from the old operation. My felling is that they like to lay their eggs in soft compost - like wood chips that we landscape with. Perhaps it serves a two fold purpose: Easy digging and an easy escape for the young. With the small size of the turtle's brain; I really do not think that they 'think' about this - I do think that evolution has programed them this way over the millennia.