Did I find my lost turtle or is this a different one?

turtle_shells

New Member
Joined
Dec 26, 2020
Messages
2
Location (City and/or State)
India
Around 13 years ago I had a small pet turtle and I had him for around 3 years until one day, he disappeared and never to be seen again.
At that time, I was a kid, and I did not know if that was a male or female turtle, but for now lets assume that's a "he".

I have attached his picture below, taken when we found him today. We had put him in a small water tub to check if he had old pictures of my turtle a decade ago and compare any similarities, but unfortunately I couldn't find any good images since I had taken them in an old Nokia phone.

Today we were hearing strange rustling noises from the heap of dried leaves, and when investigated, we found that to be a turtle that looked just like the one I had a decade ago, only twice its size.

We thought he was lost and couldn't possibly be ours since it was so long, so we picked it up and let it near the bushes far from the heap of dried leaves, but after a while he retraced his path back to his heap of leaves and burrowed inside it again.
I always thought that my turtle was a Giant Asian pond turtle, please correct me if I am wrong based on the picture I have attached below.

If we had not noticed the rustle, we would not have found him at all.

We live in an urban neighborhood with houses all around and there are no swamp/water bodies anywhere near my house, and there are/were no neighbors of mine who have turtles. I was the only one in the entire block.

My questions are, can turtles have such long term memory? Do they have good spatial memory and a good sense of directions? Can they live among us, without us noticing it for over a decade? It has a good camouflaged shell to complement with dried leaves though.
Is it lost? What do I do? Can turtles like mine survive in urban areas without swamp/lakes? Why did he choose to burrow inside the dried leaves? Is it one of their traits? Do they make nests to take rest?


turtle.JPG

PS: At the time of this writing, he is still inside the leaves, there is no sound/clue that he is inside.
 

Calaveras

Member
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
60
Location (City and/or State)
Sacramento area California
If this turtle is the species you think it is it is not native to your area therefore, it is probably your turtle.
I would provide some water for it. read about the place where it lives and what it needs to eat.
 

turtle_shells

New Member
Joined
Dec 26, 2020
Messages
2
Location (City and/or State)
India
If this turtle is the species you think it is it is not native to your area therefore, it is probably your turtle.
I would provide some water for it. read about the place where it lives and what it needs to eat.
Thanks for the reply. It is native to my continent (Asia) but not native to my locality, which clearly does not meet it's required biome. I would definitely read more about it to learn how it lives and thrives in places like my backyard.
 

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