Turtle Mating: Why is the male turtle’s claws flapping?

Turtle Mating – Have you ever wondered how these slow, serene animals breed?

Thanks to the substantial information that is now available on turtles and their anatomy, physiology, quirks, and oddities, we now know quite a bit about how they mate.

Languid tortoises have limbs that are comparable to tortoises, but tortoises’ feet have elongated claws. Their long claws are used to mount logs to sunbathe, an activity that they seem to enjoy and that is essential for their thermoregulation. Their long claws are also useful when moving or climbing from place to place on land. However, did you know that these long claws also serve for mating?

Before actual mating occurs, male tortoises usually fight over a female. This “courtship stage” between competing males can last up to 45 minutes. The larger male would normally be aggressive and show dominance towards the other turtles by fighting and scratching their faces. There are also some kinds of turtles, such as the red-eared slider, that mate underwater. When the dominant tortoise finally establishes his superiority among the other male tortoises, then he will sneak or swim towards the female to mount her and begin to mate, that is, if the female is receptive to him! Otherwise, she may become aggressive towards him. The mating of the turtles varies between ten minutes and several hours.

If the female accepts the advance of the dominant male, the male will use his long claws in a seemingly strange way. Just before mounting the female, the male tortoise will begin to wave its claws in a vibrating motion at the female’s face. Sometimes the tortoise will also make the same shaking gesture on the female’s head. Generally, it is the back of its claws that the male tortoise uses during this behavior. A tortoise owner, who had personally witnessed this behavior, added that after the male had asserted dominance over the other males, his larger male tortoise began stroking the female’s nose with his claws. In a matter of minutes, the female tortoise had allowed the male tortoise to mount her to mate.

Some experts claim that males do this to stimulate the female for mating, while others claim that this behavior is the male’s natural manifestation of arousal.