David T. Kirkpatrick

This book is meant for those wanting information on turtle care as pets, not about the lives of turtles. For pet care, the author does an adequate job. For knowledge about individual species daily lives, it is not adequate. For example, where live, soome streams and associated ponds go dry some years yet the turtles survive. Apparently they go somewhere, probably deep under the dry creekbed perhaps, even thoug the ground becomes powder dry for many feet down. I could not find any mention of this for any tutle in this book. I was not even able to find the growth rate for any turtle. I wanted to know what the soft-shelled turtles ate. No luck what their "carniverous" food was made up of.

Even for those contemplating turtles as pets, the index is almost unusable due to microscopic font. I measure about thirty-five characters per inch without a magnifying glass, needed to really get it measured.. The text is much better at about 21 characters per inch.

One example of the difficulty finding general information occurs in the chapter on species descriptions. That is where the darkening of the shell with age occurs, not in the earlier chapter titled "overview of turtles.

Two pages are devoted to discussing the "four inch law" but nowhere is the reader told about what age the turtle reached 4 inches in size.

Today, while eating at a BBQ place on a lake I watched about a hundred turtles of several species come up to the shore as I came over. They were aparently coming for scraps, either homemade bread or bbq. There were several softshell turtles of various sizes in the group. This book descrivbes them as "carnivorous" but I suspect that includes bbq since they were coming over with the Red-eared turtles. Perhaps they could be raised on bbq instead of live food?

I've witnessed turtles migrate as a group several times. I wondeer how far they will move during this migration, searching for a wetter habitat? You won't find migration in this book.

Consider using this book for pet care but not for general knowledge on turtles.… (mehr)