Harmless · Native to the United States

Wood turtle

Glyptemys insculpta (Le Conte, 1830)

Also called North American wood turtle
Data updated October 2026

Wood turtle walking on a sandy stream bank, showing its rough, sculpted brown shell and orange neck and legs
Fig. 1 — Adult with the carved, pyramid-like shell plates that give the species its name.
Close view of a wood turtle's dark head and orange-red throat
Fig. 2 — The chin, throat and legs are washed with orange to red.

At a glance

A medium-sized turtle of clear, cool northern streams and the forests and meadows along them. It splits its time between water and land and is famous for stomping the ground to bring up earthworms. It matures late and lives for decades, so habitat loss, road deaths and illegal collection hit it hard.

01

Identification

The wood turtle has a broad, fairly flat, brown to grayish-brown upper shell. Each large plate rises into a low pyramid marked with concentric growth rings, so the shell looks as if it were carved from wood. The skin of the head and upper limbs is dark, while the chin, throat and legs are orange to red or yellow. The lower shell is yellow with a large black blotch on the outer rear corner of each plate.

  1. 01Sculpted shell. Pyramid-shaped plates with deep growth rings, like the grain in carved wood.
  2. 02Orange-red skin. Bright orange to red on the throat, chin and legs, against a dark head.
  3. 03No hinge. The yellow, black-blotched lower shell is rigid. Males have a dished-in lower shell and thicker tails; females have a flat one.

Commonly confused with

The eastern box turtle has a high, domed shell without pyramid-shaped plates and a hinged lower shell it can close tight.

02

Size

02 in4 in6 in8 in10 in12 in Typical adult shell · about 7 in (18 cm)

Adults usually have an upper shell 5½ to 8 inches (14–20 cm) long, and big individuals reach about 9 to 10 inches. Males are slightly larger than females and have bigger front-leg scales and claws. Hatchlings are plain gray-brown, with a nearly round shell and a tail almost as long as the body.

03

Range & habitat

Clear, gravel-bottomed forest stream with a sandy bank and floodplain meadow
Fig. 3 — Clear, meandering streams with gravel or sand bottoms and open banks are the core habitat.

Wood turtles range from Nova Scotia and Maine south through New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to northern Virginia and West Virginia, and west across the Great Lakes region — Ontario, Quebec, Michigan and Wisconsin — to Minnesota and northeastern Iowa. They are tied to clear, cool, moderately flowing streams and rivers with sandy or gravel bottoms, deep pools, undercut banks and woody debris. Around those streams they use floodplain forest, alder thickets, wet meadows, fields and sandy shores for feeding, basking and nesting.

04

Diet & predators

Wood turtles are omnivores that forage both on land and on stream bottoms. They eat earthworms, slugs, insects, crayfish and tadpoles, along with leaves, grasses, flowers, berries and mushrooms, and occasionally newborn mice. They are known for “worm stomping”: a turtle thumps the ground with its front end, and the vibrations bring earthworms to the surface, perhaps because they feel like rain or a digging mole.

Feeds on

  • Earthworms and slugs
  • Insects, crayfish and tadpoles
  • Berries, fruit and flowers
  • Mushrooms, leaves and grasses

Preyed on by

  • Raccoons and skunks (eggs and young)
  • Virginia opossum (eggs and young)
  • Foxes, coyotes, ravens, crows and herons (young)
  • River otters (occasionally adults)
Earthworm on damp soil
Prey — earthworms, brought up by worm stomping.
Virginia opossum close-up
Predator — Virginia opossum, a nest raider.

05

Behavior & seasons

Wood turtles are semi-terrestrial. Water is where they mate, feed on stream bottoms and spend the winter, while land is where they nest, bask and forage. In spring and summer they spread out from the stream into nearby open fields, thickets, meadows and forest, then return to the water in fall.

In October and November they move into cold, slow streams and rivers to spend the winter in a hibernation-like state called brumation, resting in undercut banks, beaver lodges, muskrat burrows or leaf-filled pools on the stream bottom. They may move around underwater on mild winter days and come out in March or April.

06

Reproduction

Mating takes place in the water and can happen in any season, and females can store sperm for several years. In June and July females lay a single clutch in loose, sunny, sandy or gravelly soil, often on sandbars and open stream banks. Eggs hatch after about 70 to 90 days. Wood turtles mature very late, at about 11 to 14 years or older, and can live 40 to 80 years in the wild.

07

Conservation

The wood turtle is not listed under the US Endangered Species Act. A 1995 petition was turned down, and a new petition filed in 2012 led the US Fish and Wildlife Service to begin a full status review; as of October 2026 we found no final 12-month listing decision published. International trade is regulated under CITES Appendix II, and the species is listed as threatened in Canada.

It is a Species of Greatest Conservation Need in every state where it lives, and several states give it legal protection — for example, it is state-threatened in New Jersey and Virginia and a species of special concern in Maine. Threats include loss and breakup of stream-side habitat, road deaths, farm machinery in hayfields, nest predation by raccoons that thrive near people, poor water quality, and illegal collection for the pet trade. Because adults take so long to replace, losing even a few each year can drive a population down. Browse endangered reptiles.

Keep reading

Sources

Data updated October 2026 · How we build these pages