Turtles are cute animals to be kept as a pet, but do they get territorial like other pet reptiles? Common household reptiles like chameleons and bearded dragons are known for their territorial aggressiveness. However, not much is known about a turtle’s territorial characteristics.
Against common belief, turtles are indeed territorial. Much like other reptiles, turtles are also solitary animals that don’t fancy sharing their space with another animal. Placing more than 1 turtle in the same enclosure could be troublesome, however, there are situations when it can be accomplished.
Turtles in captivity and the wild are very loyal to their territory. A turtle would rarely move away from its territory during its long life span. In most instances, turtles do not enjoy the presence of other turtles in their territory.
Nevertheless, in a captive environment, there are instances when turtles could be placed together. It is important to note that even then, it’s rare for the truce between turtles to be maintained forever.
Why Are Turtles Territorial?
Turtles give a lot of importance to the space around it and often get disturbed when their territory is violated and there are reasons for it. This is mainly because most turtles do not cross over a certain distance from their territory.
Commonly turtle territories are marked from the spot the turtle hatched out of an egg. Throughout the life of a turtle, it could have maintained the same territory and not have explored beyond a certain radius of it.
Otherwise, the turtle’s territory would be based on where it has nested. There would be several criteria the turtle would look out for before building a nest and claiming territory.
Turtles Live Within A Radius
Unlike many other animals, turtles don’t actually venture further out of their territory. Turtles require space to move around and grow. However, once the turtle has marked its territory, it would not go too far away from it.
It is estimated that turtles do not exceed a 1.5-mile radius from their territory at any time. This is also supported by the fact that turtles have a built-in homing instinct that guides them back to the nest within the said radius.
Hence, if you see a turtle crossing the road, try not to pick it up and place it in a ‘safe’ place. You may be unintentionally taking the turtle away from the radius limit it needs to get back to its nest.
The best is to just place the turtle at a spot on a straight line from where you picked it. Otherwise, the turtle may get lost and confused. This may cause the turtle to be put in harm’s way.
Turtles Have Homing Instinct
Turtles depend a lot on their homing instinct to get it back to their nest. However, this homing instinct only works up to a certain radius from its nest.
Hence, it is the reason why turtles in the wild will not cross a limited radius length from their home at any given age. If a turtle is taken away from its limited radius by accident, it may not be able to find its way home.
This lost turtle would then attempt to recreate a new nest at a new location. However, this is not healthy for the biodiversity at the new location as turtles are known to be invasive animals.
Therefore, if a turtle creates a new home in a new area, it would indirectly be changing the biodiversity of that area, causing the animals already using the area as its habitat to wither. In addition to that, if a turtle has wandered past its limited radius, it could also become confused.
A confused turtle in the wild can be described as a headless chicken. The turtle would not know which direction to head in and might be in harm’s way. So, never try to move a turtle away from where it is, just leave it as it is.
What Happens If You Remove A Turtle From Its Territory?
For turtles in captivity, the enclosure becomes its territory. Oftentimes, this is the reason for turtles in an enclosure to get in fights, as it is each fighting for its territory.
With that said, captive turtles won’t wander away from the tank unless it feels threatened. Nevertheless, due to the longevity of a turtle’s life, it is common for it to be abandon by owners after some time.
Turtles are long-term pets and you need to be able to commit to caring for them before deciding to get one. When a turtle is abandoned, it is basically taken away from its territory.
This leads to two scenarios, either the turtle invades a new territory or loses its life to a predator or accident. Captive turtles aren’t used to the predatory life of the wild, thus placing them in the wild makes them vulnerable to predator attacks.
When Can You Place Turtles Together In the Same Territory?
Turtles are solitary animals that are defensive of their territory. However, there are certain circumstances in which your turtle might be willing to share its space with other turtles.
Even in the wild, there are times where turtles could be seen basking together at the same spot. Nonetheless, in a captive atmosphere, it’s important to know when you can place your pet turtles together in the enclosure.
Otherwise, you risk the turtles getting into a confrontation and getting hurt. It may puzzle you that your turtles are willing to share at times yet becomes aggressive over it at other times.
This is just the way turtles are, which is why they are considered territorial animals. There are mainly 2 circumstances where you could place turtles together and still have a low chance of them fighting.
Juvenile Turtles
When turtles are still in the juvenile stages of their life, you can often see them move together with their fellow hatchlings in the wild. At young ages, turtles actually do share their limelight with other turtles but they get more solitary when they grow up.
Hence, you could place a couple of juvenile turtles together for the first few years. However, as the turtles grow bigger, it would require more space and this would cause a conflict between the turtles.
At this point, it would be advisable to separate them. Something interesting about turtles is their liking towards other turtles. They communicate with each other through sound, and similar to humans, turtles could also like and dislike other turtles.
In captivity, this is commonly experienced when you suddenly notice 2 turtles that had been sharing the same enclosure for years suddenly start fighting often.
In this instance, you should also separate them into individual enclosures. Once a turtle dislikes another turtle, it would never get back to good terms.
During Mating Season
The only other time that turtles could be placed together is during mating season. Male turtles are usually open to allowing a female turtle into its enclosure during this time.
However, the same cannot be said for female turtles. Female turtles could get defensive of their territory and pose to be aggressive towards the male turtle.
Nevertheless, this rarely occurs, and the reason it may happen is when the female turtle feels insecure or intimidated by the male turtle. To avoid this, it’s important for you to slowly introduce the turtles to each other and place them away from one another at the beginning.
Allowing the 2 different gendered turtles to slowly find their way to each other. If you notice the male turtle is biting on the female turtle’s leg, don’t panic as this is a gentle bite and happens commonly out of affection.
However, if the roles are reversed, and it is the female turtle biting the male, then it means the female turtle has rejected the male turtle’s mating advances. In this scenario, separate them as quickly as possible.
Conditions for Turtles to Live Together In Same Enclosure
If you insist on placing two or more turtles together in the same enclosure, then certain conditions need to be fulfilled. It is important to acknowledge that turtles are solitary and territorial animals.
However, under the right circumstances, you could place more than one turtle together successfully. Nevertheless, you need to be prepared with contingency plans to separate the turtles if a conflict arises.
To successfully place turtles together in the same captive space, you would need to be aware of the below conditions. These are the ideal settings required to even consider placing more than a single turtle in the same enclosure.
Age and Size
When housing turtles together, the most important thing to look out for is the turtles’ age and size. Both turtles’ age and sizes should be similar.
If either turtle is larger than the other, then there is a great risk in terms of showcasing its dominance. This would lead to fights and aggression, especially from the larger turtle.
Naturally, the bigger-sized turtle will prosper and the smaller turtle will become an outcast. Furthermore, if a fully grown adult turtle is housed together with a juvenile turtle, it gets more dangerous.
The fully grown turtle’s attacks could be fatal to the juvenile or yearling turtle. It could also be fatal in the case of housing two different species of turtles together, whereby one turtle outgrows the other.
Nevertheless, if both the turtles you plan on housing together are about the same age, size, and are of the same or similar species, it’s probably alright to place them in the same enclosure. However, this living condition would only be ideal until the turtles grow up or as long as it fancies each other’s company.
An adult turtle despises sharing living spaces with another adult. So at this point, you would need to make sure the turtles are separated into different enclosures.
Species and Specific Care
If you have an idea to place more than one turtle in the same cage or tank, it is important to ensure that the turtles are of the same species. If you intend on placing different species of turtles together, at least make sure that the species are similar to each other.
This would come in handy as different species of turtles require different types of specific care. Placing two species of turtles with totally different types of husbandry could be detrimental to the health of both turtles and also hectic for you to handle.
Different species of turtles have different dietary requirements. Furthermore, turtles are sensitive to the temperature of the environment for their routine activities, and this sensitivity differs in species.
The ideal way to place turtles together would be to use turtles of the same species or similar species. This would mean that the specific care requirements needed would be similar and the turtles won’t be stepping on each other’s toes.
Gender
Another important factor you should consider before placing turtles in the same tank is their gender. The biggest struggle with this is that it’s difficult to differentiate the gender of turtles when it is just a hatchling or juvenile.
This is simply because, at that young age, turtles look very similar regardless if it’s a male or female. It is usually only as the turtle grows older that you would be able to tell turtles apart by their gender.
Most notably this happens after the turtle has hit puberty. Placing two or more males in the same enclosure would be inviting trouble.
This is due to the male turtle’s aggressive and territorial nature that would result in fights between the turtles. However, this does not apply to female turtles. Female turtles are not aggressive and unlike male turtles, female turtles do not instinctively fight over dominance or territory.
Female turtles would only get into a fight to defend themselves from an attacker or to reject the mating advances of a male turtle. Therefore, it’s ill-advised to house more than one male turtle in the same enclosure.
Nevertheless, you could place two female turtles and they could be just fine in getting along. To house a male and female turtle together is not ideal mainly due to their mating possibilities.
In which case, you would be breeding captive turtles. Then you would need more enclosures to keep the juvenile turtles separated. Hence, it is best to leave turtle breeding to professional breeders.
Temperament
Housing turtles together also comes down to your turtle’s temperament. Each turtle has its own personality. Although some may be willing to share its enclosure with other turtles over a given time, some turtles may be against it right from the get-go.
Even if your turtle is positively sharing its enclosure with another turtle, a fight can still happen all of a sudden. Solitary and territorial are permanent behavior of turtles and it leads to your turtle getting defensive or dominant over other turtles.
Either way, this temperament of your turtles will sooner or later lead to a conflict, resulting in a fight. At this point, there would be no turning back as the only action you could do is to separate the turtles into different enclosures.
Visual barriers could be used to prevent such situations from arising, however, it would only be a temporary solution. Once the turtles recognize the presence of another in their territory, their animal instincts would kick in and it’s only a matter of time before a fight occurs.
Proper Enclosure Size and Equipment
To be able to house more than one turtle in the same enclosure, you would need to prepare an enclosure big enough for both turtles. Although under certain conditions turtles could live together, it’s still better to provide each turtle with sufficient personal space.
Furthermore, the equipment used in the enclosure would also need to be adjusted to fulfill the demands of more than one turtle. This means you should create two separate basking spots for each of the turtles so they don’t have to fight for one.
When doing so, place each basking spot to be at opposite ends of the enclosure. This will provide each of the turtles with enough room to maneuver about in its own basking spot as well as allowing it to claim its territory.
This will also somewhat prevent a fight over dominance of basking spot as the turtles live together. If you intend on only making one basking spot, then do ensure that the basking spot is large enough for two turtles. Or else, this will create another opportunity for the turtles to fight over the dominance of the basking spot.
In The Wild
Although it’s a common sight to see turtles in the wild near each other, this only happens when the turtles are still young or during mating season. Otherwise, it would be rare to see turtles in a cluster.
Even when you come across a turtle from the wild crossing the road, you would realize that it’s always a single turtle, there won’t be other turtles in the same area. This is evidence that turtles, even in the wild, are solidary and not group animals.
As turtles grow older and larger, their solidary stand is more obvious. Older turtles would not be seen in groups, you might see them in pairs but that is solely for mating purposes.
What Happens If Turtles Are Kept In Close Vicinity?
Turtles are territorial and in the presence of another turtle in its territory, turtles would get aggressive. Several consequences could take place if a turtle trespasses into another turtle’s territory.
In many instances with captive turtles housed together, this could be fatal if separating action isn’t immediately introduced.
Fight
In a show of aggression, the most obvious thing you would notice is a fight between your turtles in the same enclosure. Due to its territorial nature, there comes a point whereby turtles would either fight for the territory or defend their own.
Furthermore, turtle fights are not noisy and happen over some time. Thus, if you had not been noticing this unhealthy behavior in your turtles while it’s happening, you may end up losing one or even both the turtles.
Although turtles are not built to kill each other, there are high possibilities for the turtles to get injured during the fights. If the injured turtle isn’t taken to a vet to be checked and nurtured immediately, it could lead to the demise of the turtle.
The only positive you could take away from turtle fights is that they won’t kill each other. Turtles have the carapace only as a means of self-defense and not used for attacking. In addition to that, turtles do not possess any other type of attacking weapons to kill another turtle. However, a turtle could still bite and injure its opponent.
Bite
Turtles are strong biters and anyone unlucky enough to have experienced it before would agree. Turtles aren’t built to be an attacking weapon, it is more commonly recognized for its defensive features.
When a turtle is intimidated, it’s more likely it would retreat into its shell than to surge towards the source of intimidation. However, in the rare occasion where a turtle intends to attack, it could utilize its strong bite force to injure its opponent.
When a turtle feels threatened, it would always strike back with a bite and many turtle owners would have gone through this. Likewise, if your turtle dislikes the companion it has in its tank, it will also attempt to attack it.
Turtle fights usually only involve pushing and climbing until it gets serious then, biting will be involved. It is biting in fights that usually injure turtles. The strength of a turtle’s bite is depended on the size and maturity of the turtle.
A large and old turtle could easily bite off the head of a juvenile turtle in a fight. Nevertheless, do not underestimate the bite force of a smaller-sized turtle as it could be hurtful as well.
Dominance
The biggest problem you would encounter with placing two turtles in the same tank is a fight for dominance. Much like other pet reptiles, turtles are territorial and very protective of their space.
Moreover, given the opportunity, turtles would assert their dominance over another turtle. Once a turtle recognizes that it’s bigger and stronger than another turtle in the same enclosure, the bigger turtle would likely dominate the enclosure while intimidating the smaller one.
This condition would make it very unhealthy to live in for the turtle that’s not in dominance. When a turtle is dominating the enclosure, it would conquer the food bowl, basking spot, and most of the space in the enclosure.
This causes the other turtle to be deprived of its basic needs which makes the turtle weaker and more prone to illness. In addition to that, the smaller turtle will also be constantly harassed and attacked by the dominant turtle.
With that said, it’s most likely the smaller turtle would get injure and possibly lose its life. Hence, it’s best to never place different sizes of turtles together.
Stress
It is commonly known that turtles are susceptible to stress. Although turtles tend to be slow-paced animals, it still requires its personal space to venture around in.
The inability to move around freely could highly increase the stress levels of your turtle. Furthermore, when turtles are placed near each other, they will get stressed up as well.
Hence, if you were to house more than one turtle in the enclosure, you risk stressing up the turtles. Stress is considered a slow killer of reptiles, and it applies to turtles as well.
Moreover, as turtles in the same tank tend to fight, there would always be a more dominant and stronger turtle compared to the other. The weaker turtle will therefore be bullied into a corner by the dominant turtle and not be able to move freely which will stress it out.
Thus, to reduce the amount of stress your turtle experiences and provide it a better and calmer mental health, it’s best not to place turtles together in an enclosure.
What Do Turtles Use Their Territories for?
We know turtles are territorial, but what are the territories used for? Turtles generally use their territory for several factors. It is important to note that a turtle rarely moves too far away from its territory in search of necessities.
Therefore, to claim a territory the turtle would first need to ensure that all it needs throughout its life is readily available within the territory. The most commonly sought-after uses of territory for turtles are as below.
Nesting
Turtles usually create their territory based on where their nests are. The nest would be created mainly due to egg-laying reasons. This could be done by a female turtle or a new hatchling.
Female turtles are known to revisit laying grounds to lay more eggs. Whereas hatchlings are also known to claim the nests it is born in to be its territory.
A dispute in the territory would usually be settled through a fight or intimidation. Although not as territorial as male turtles, female turtles will also get defensive of their egg-laying spots. On the other hand, male turtles usually create a nest to bask in.
In comparison to female turtles, male turtles get very aggressive when their territory is trespassed by another turtle. In captivity, it’s never a good idea to place two male turtles in the same territory.
Hibernation
A turtle is also very defensive of its territory as it would hibernate in its territory. When a turtle is in hibernation, it does minimal activity and becomes very vulnerable to attacks.
Hence, the turtle guards its territory aggressively to prevent getting attacked during hibernation. Turtles usually hibernate during the cold season.
However, unlike some animals, turtles don’t go into complete hibernation. Instead, they remain alert to the changes in light and temperature throughout their hibernation period.
Although the turtle’s metabolism is further reduced during hibernation, you could witness turtles moving around. This is mainly due to the insecurity it feels and paranoia of losing its territory or getting attacked.
To Get Food and Water
The most important factor that turtles look into before claiming territory is sources of food and water. In captivity, your turtle would not need to worry about this as you would be its source of food and water.
Hence the main reason for a captive turtle to be territorial is to acquire space for itself. In the wild, turtles have to search for food and water as it’s not readily given to them.
Thus, they usually create a nest in a territory that has water and food easily available. Once a turtle claims a territory, it would not explore out of the said territory.
This proves how important it is for wild turtles to be able to accomplish a stable source for food and water in the territory it’s in. Furthermore, turtles rarely relocate in their long lifetime.
Thus, with the advances in architectural lands and industrial properties, humans have been depriving turtles of territories to be made into their habitat.
Conclusion
Before you own a pet turtle you should acknowledge that it is a territorial animal. It would be highly risky to place more than one turtle in the same enclosure unless it’s for mating purposes or the turtles are still juvenile.
If you insist on housing two or more turtles together, then you should be aware of the conditions to be met. In addition to that, it’s also essential to know the negative effects that your turtle could experience if placed in the same enclosure with another turtle.
There are reasons behind turtle’s territorial behavior and they usually relate to their solitary nature. Moreover, turtles will choose their territory very carefully especially in the wild.
Lastly, it’s crucial that your pet turtle is afforded its own space and is kept away from the risks that could arise from sharing living space.
