Painted Turtle Study
By Camilla Garrison
For those of you who have been here since the Blogger days, you might recall a Painted Turtle Study, conducted by siblings Camilla and Isaac Garrison here on Crescent Pond (see diagram 1).
In July of 2023, the Garrison siblings were on Block Island for the summer, and since they were little, had been going over to the little dock on their family’s pond, throwing pieces of old bread in the water and scooping up turtles in nets to hold and look at. That year, Camilla and Isaac had a hypothesis and wanted to do some experimenting. Their theory was that after years and years of turtle-catching (since their great uncle had dug the pond in 1988) the turtles had definitely been traumatized and probably had a generational fear of nets. Camilla-soon to become an experienced cat-trainer, figured if you made the people on the dock a positive experience (by associating it with a positive experience: bread) the turtles would come faster, bring friends and have a more pleasant time altogether. You wouldn’t like to be scooped up in a net, would you?
Over the next net-less summers, the turtles came fast at feeding time (dusk), brought their baby turtles (which had never come before), swam towards a bread-bearing hand and took pieces right from them. During the summer of ‘24, the turtle-feeding siblings got their hands on an old board, and fashioned a ramp from the muck onto the dock. The turtles got so far as halfway up the ramp most days, and one eventually got up on the dock, took a piece of bread and left immediately, but still, that was something!
This year, (or at least the last two feedings) the turtles seem to remember what footsteps mean bread, where to come, and most of the older ones will still be hand-fed without any biting or snapping. The Garrison siblings believe that their experiment was a huge success and will continue to no-net feed and test new ideas!
Past posts on painted turtles:
https://www.harborpondpost.com/articles/zpjhx20b41uk2v13xgqhqyvfc7oio9
https://www.harborpondpost.com/articles/ymlf3mazmtc4hjtf4zi325dv8rrf8n
