If you’ve noticed your box turtle digging and burrowing, you’re likely curious about this behavior. Rest assured, you’ve come to the right place for insights and explanations.
Box turtles burrow for brumation, nesting, aestivation, to alleviate boredom, and to enhance their safety and security.
Keep reading to learn more about each possible reason and what you can do to help them.
5 Possible Reasons Your Box Turtle Is Burrowing
Brumation
As the temperatures drop and daylight dwindles, your turtle’s internal clock signals that it’s time to slow down. During brumation, turtles will often seek refuge underground to maintain a stable, cool temperature away from the harsher winter conditions above ground.
Your turtle will seek a cozy spot in its habitat, often burrowing into the substrate to create a snug den where it can remain relatively undisturbed for weeks or even months.
During this period, you might notice a significant decrease in your turtle’s activity levels, appetite, and responsiveness. It’s essential to ensure their environment remains safe and stable, with proper humidity levels to prevent dehydration.
While brumation can be concerning to witness, understanding that it’s a natural, healthy process can put your mind at ease.
Nesting
Nesting involves turtles meticulously selecting a spot they deem perfect for their potential offspring. This process can be quite elaborate; the turtle will often spend considerable time digging and testing the soil, ensuring it has the right temperature and humidity.
Even if your turtle isn’t gravid (carrying eggs), she might still engage in nesting-like behaviors. This can be due to hormonal changes or simply an expression of instincts.
It is essential to provide a suitable substrate for burrowing and nesting, as it allows your turtle to express this natural behavior safely.
Aestivation
Much like brumation, aestivation is a period of dormancy, but it occurs during the hot and dry months rather than the cold ones. When your box turtle begins burrowing and becomes less active during the warmer periods, it might be entering aestivation.
During aestivation, turtles will seek out cool, moist places to burrow into, often going deeper into the ground than they would for casual digging. This retreat allows them to maintain a lower body temperature and reduce their metabolic rate, conserving energy and water.
Ensuring your turtle has access to a cooler, shaded area within its habitat can facilitate this natural behavior. Additionally, maintaining a part of their enclosure with moist soil can help your turtle find a suitable spot for aestivation, mimicking the conditions they would seek in the wild.
Boredom
Boredom in box turtles is a lesser-known but equally important factor that can lead to burrowing behavior. Unlike brumation or aestivation, which are instinctual survival responses, burrowing due to boredom is more about seeking stimulation and engagement in their environment.
When a turtle’s habitat lacks variety, such as different textures, hiding spots, and objects to explore, it might start burrowing more frequently to entertain itself and fulfill its natural digging instincts.
Adding features like plants, rocks, and shallow water areas makes your turtle’s home more interesting for them to explore and contributes to their overall well-being.
Safety And Security
When a turtle senses danger or feels stressed, it might retreat into a burrow it has made or start digging a new one. This behavior provides a sense of safety, as being underground shields them from view and offers a physical barrier against potential harm.
Moreover, burrowing can be soothing for turtles, as it allows them to create a controlled, secure space to manage their exposure to the elements and other stressors.
How Far Down Do Box Turtles Burrow?
Generally, box turtles can burrow down from a few inches to over a foot deep. When burrowing for brumation during the cooler months, they might go deeper to reach temperatures stable enough to sustain their dormant state.
In contrast, when seeking refuge from the heat or for safety, the depth might be less, just enough to shield themselves from the sun or to feel secure. The soil type also plays a significant role; sandy or loamy soils that are easier to dig through may see turtles burrowing deeper with less effort, whereas in harder, clay-rich soils, they might not go as deep.
Do Box Turtles Burrow In The Summer?
Yes, box turtles burrow in the summer, and this behavior is often related to aestivation—a period of dormancy that helps them escape the high temperatures and dry conditions typical of summer. Unlike brumation, which occurs in response to cold weather, aestivation is a coping strategy for heat and drought.
The depth and frequency of these summer burrows can depend on the external temperatures and the availability of shady, cool areas in their habitat.
Including shaded areas, various substrates, and perhaps even a shallow water feature can help simulate the cooler, moist conditions they seek for aestivation.
How Long Do Box Turtles Stay Underground?
During brumation in the colder months, a box turtle might remain burrowed for several weeks to months, emerging only as temperatures rise in the spring.
In the case of aestivation during hot, dry summer periods, the duration might be shorter, ranging from a few days to several weeks, depending on the severity of the conditions. Box turtles use this time to escape the heat and conserve moisture, resurfacing when conditions become more favorable, such as after rain or when temperatures drop.
Nesting can also lead a female turtle to spend extended periods underground. However, this is generally limited to the time required to dig the nest, lay the eggs, and carefully cover them up, which might span several hours to a day.
For safety and security reasons, a box turtle may burrow for short periods, such as overnight or when it feels threatened, and these instances may last from a few hours to a day or two.
Are You Supposed To Bury Box Turtles?
No, you should not manually bury box turtles. These creatures possess strong instincts that guide their burrowing behavior, whether for brumation, aestivation, nesting, or seeking shelter. When box turtles decide to burrow, they do so based on their specific needs and environmental cues, such as temperature, humidity, and security.
Forcing a turtle into the ground can cause stress, disorientation, and potentially harm, disrupting their natural behavior and decision-making process.
Instead, you should provide an environment supporting the turtle’s ability to burrow naturally when it feels needed. This includes offering a substrate conducive to digging, I recommend this coconut fiber substrate from Zoo Med, and ensuring the enclosure has varied terrain and areas where the turtle can decide to dig and burrow as it would in the wild.
How Do Box Turtles Breathe Underground?
While underground, box turtles employ a fascinating adaptation called cloacal respiration to breathe. This unique biological process allows them to absorb oxygen directly through the blood vessels in their cloaca, the multipurpose opening used for excretion and reproduction.
Cloacal respiration enables box turtles to exchange gases with their environment without requiring direct air intake through their lungs. The moist soil surrounding the burrowed turtle facilitates this gas exchange, allowing oxygen to diffuse through the cloaca’s lining and into the bloodstream while carbon dioxide is expelled.
This process is efficient enough to sustain them during periods of low oxygen demand but is supplementary to lung breathing when they are active above ground.
Final Thoughts
Your box turtle’s burrowing can be due to several natural reasons like brumation, nesting, aestivation, a need for safety, or even boredom. These behaviors are part of their instinct to regulate body temperature, stay hydrated, feel secure, and stay healthy.
Remember, it’s important to let your turtle burrow on its own and not bury it manually, as this could cause stress.
Related Posts:
