When Ann Berry Somers was 7 years old and growing up in North Carolina, she encountered a box turtle on a path. She picked up the small reptile and looked into its eyes. Instead of retreating into its ...

As a budding naturalist growing up in the concrete-heavy environs of Boston, I would regularly thumb through my family’s collection of nature books and daydream about the creatures within. One species ...

There’s a good reason for the box turtle’s name. A hinge on the bottom of its shell lets the land-dwelling turtle pull its legs, head, and tail inside and close it up tight — like a box. When I was a ...

It's a long-held idea that turtles can tuck their heads into their shells when threatened. But is it true? And is this protective trick why turtles the world over have shells today? The answer is that ...

An ambitious long-term study of box turtles seeks to study the population across North Carolina to determine the health of the species over a hundred years. With a story about an animal that inspires ...

Turtle shells evolved over the course of 300 million years, but self-defense wasn't the initial driver, researchers think. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...