Terrapene carolina triunguis The Three-toed Box Turtle is found from the valley of the Mississippi river to Texas and up to Florida in the South. This subspecies prefers clearly drier areas compared to the others. It grows to a maximum length of 16 cm and shows light markings on a tan to brown background. Males often develop red, orange or yellow markings on the head and front legs. In order to enhance confusion Three-toed Box Turtles sometimes have fourtoed hind legs. Together with T. c. bauri it is statistically the smallest Box Turtle. The two other subspecies T. c. mexicana and T. c. yucatana live in Mexico, in the northeastern part of the country and Yucatan respectively. The former form has three-toed hind legs, the latter has four toes. Both are often light brown to yellow in colour with the size comparable to T. c. carolina, but much bigger animals, resembling T. c. major, can occur. The complete species listing can be found on the IUCN Red List. All are classified as “vulnerable” (IUCN Red list, 2011) on the CITES appendix II.

Published as part of Boonman, John, 2019, Forty years of Box Turtle husbandry, pp. 7-16 in Pod @ rcis 10 (1) on page 8, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4973267