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Argentine sideneck turtle

Phrynops hilarii

This is a very large and hardy turtle (up to 40cm/15" long). Its range is the eastern parts of Argentina around the Rio de la Plata, often called the Argentine Mesopotamia, as well as Uruguay and southern Brazil.

This turtle tolerates fairly cold weather during winter and I hibernate them in water around 10C (50F). While hibernating, they sometimes emerge from the water on sunny days to bask.

My animals all originate from captive bred specimens that I received from breeders in the USA, Uruguay, and Argentina. Consequently I have many bloodlines in my relatively small colony (about 15 of 4-5 bloodlines). I always try to prevent inbreeding.

These turtles not only tolerate very cold weather, they are very hardy animals otherwise, too. The most difficult part is raising the babies big enough. These turtles do not like to be seen from above while in the water. Clean water makes the babies very nervous. In nature they would be easy prey for birds like egrets. In clean water without water plants they would be constantly looking in vain for places in the water to be safe. Therefore, raising the babies in clean water without waterplants is guaranteed failure. I primarily use water hyacinths to give them the feeling of safety that they need. Since the larger turtles often destroy any water plants quickly, for them I simply mix some mud in the water to diminish the visibility.

These turtles can angle fish with two worm-like protuberances under the mouth. They also readily eat all kinds of insects and meat. I often give them fish and baby chicken. They learn this quickly and will come out of the water when they see you coming with the food.

Phrynops hilarii is primarily aquatic, but they also like to bask in the sun, very close to the water. I made my turtle ponds so that after every rain many gallons of fresh water runs through them from roofs etc. This keeps the water from getting too polluted and keeps the water level up.

In end of August 20003, which is quite late, I had a female make a nest on the lawn. The turtles' enclosure is a nice pond with a several foot wide sandbeach. One would think that that is suitable for the turtles' nesting. Apparently, the female didn't agree. With lots of effort, she climbed over a 3' (92cm) fence (which is pretty unbelievable), walked uphill towards our house for almost 100 feet and dug a hole in hard dry clay and laid 10 eggs there. It appears that this species likes to avoid lower elevations and/or sand near the water, and prefers higher ground and hard clay for its nest.

The construction of the nest gives us a clue to this preference. She made a very narrow opening in the hard clay and below that built a ballooned chamber for the eggs. With this construction, in this soil, one can step on the nest and there's little danger that it will collapse and damage the eggs. On the other hand, stepping on such a nest built in sand is far more likely to end in an omlette.

As of December 22, 2003 the eggs have not hatched yet. I am keeping them in my insect barn, where it is cooler now (as it would be in nature too) and I still hope at least some will hatch in the Springtime.

The real lesson from this is that all too often we incorrectly assume that animals think like we do. A sandy beach close to the water is easy to dig, and we're profoundly lazy — especially when we're without power tools — so obviously the turtle will think that the sandy beach close by is great, too. Yet this turtle is the result of thousands of generations laying eggs in a very complex natural environment. It may be that all of the turtles who laid their eggs in sandy beaches had their eggs easily dug up by preditors. It is certainly the case that when rivers flood as they so often do, eggs in the sand close by would be drowned. For these and probably other, less obvious, reasons, the turtles who laid their eggs in sandy beaches have left us no descendednts and now we have only those turtles whose ancestors preferred hard clay. How often people have discovered these 'quirks' of animals by sheer luck!

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