Snakes are some of the most dangerous animals in the wild. Turtles are known for having the best defense against any predator. So, what would happen if those two meet? Will the snake try to eat the turtle? And if it tries will it be able to do so?
Most snakes can only eat baby and juvenile turtles or smaller turtle species, like the Mud or Musk Turtles. Very few snake species are able to eat full adult turtles. Some of the snake species that are able to do so are: Kingsnakes, Anacondas, and Lachesis Snakes.
While most adult snakes should be able to swallow a turtle, most of them don’t do this for two reasons. Turtles are hard to digest, due to their shells. And turtles will defend themselves. While most turtles seem pretty harmless, they can actually be very dangerous, especially against snakes.
How Turtles Defend Against Snakes
There are three different ways a snake can attack its prey. They can either bite them and poison them they can constrict their prey and try to suffocate it. Or they will simply try to swallow it whole without doing anything else.
A turtle’s shell will protect it from most of those things. A snake can still try to bite a turtle, but it has to find a soft spot like a leg. Constricting won’t work at all. And trying to swallow a whole turtle can be dangerous because turtles will fight back.
Turtles have two ways of fighting back. Biting and scratching. While their bite is not the most dangerous, compared to other animals. Against a snake that has no physical defense, it can inflict enough damage to make it back away.
Some turtles, like the snapping turtle, have such a powerful bite that they have reversed their role, and they became the hunter and the snake the prey.
If you want to see exactly how powerful the snapping turtle bite is you can check out this article: Are Snapping Turtles Dangerous? (with Bite Facts and Videos) and if you want to get an idea of how powerful the bite of an average turtle is you can check out this article: Do Turtles Bite? How Hard Do They Bite and What to Do.
So, if a snake wants to attack a turtle it needs to be very fast and precise, otherwise, it will end up in a fight that can go both ways.
Do Snakes Eat Turtle Eggs?
Eggs are a staple food for a lot of snakes. And turtle eggs make no exception. In fact, they are preferred over other types of eggs.
While most turtles have a good chance defending against a snake, they are completely unable to defend their eggs or even their babies. So turtles don’t guard their eggs, they simply lay them in a hidden spot and hope that nobody will find them. But that’s not always the case.
How Often Do Snakes Try to Eat Turtles?
So, now that we established that turtles are not as defenseless as they might seem at first sight. How often will you see a snake trying to eat a turtle?
Snakes very rarely try to eat turtles. Regardless of the species of the snake. For most snakes, turtles are something of a last resort.
Snakes swallow their prey whole, so there is no way for them to avoid the shell, which can be very hard and unpleasant to digest.
Most snakes will also have trouble fighting against a turtle. As the shell will protect the turtle from most attacks. So unless the snake is extremely big in comparison to the turtle, it has a very small chance of succeeding.
The only exception to this, are baby turtles. Most baby turtles are defenseless. While they do have a shell, it is not as hard as that of an adult, so it can be broken more easily, and it’s easier to digest.
How Hard Is the Shell of a Turtle?
In this video, the turtle shell was able to withstand the direct pressure of 620 pounds. And while this video is entertaining, and an example of how much pressure a turtle shell can withstand, it’s not entirely perfect. But it proves the point.
In the video, you will notice that when the last of the weights are added, the shell doesn’t break immediately. Instead, it breaks right after the weights start to move around. This is because the pressure of the weights was no longer concentrated in a single hard spot, but instead, it started to move around until it reached a soft spot, that couldn’t take all that pressure.
The Soft and Hard Spots of a Shell
The average turtle shell looks something like this.
It has an oval shape, and a ridge in the middle.
The hardest, most durable parts are the top and the ridge, the rest of the shell, while it’s not necessarily soft, it is a vulnerable spot that can break more easily.
The underside of the shell (the plastron), is also considered a soft spot, compared to the rest of the shell, even if it’s not included in this picture, but we will shortly talk about that part as well.
The shell of a turtle is in a lot of ways very comparable to an egg. If you apply pressure randomly on an egg it will easily break, but if you apply pressure on the hard spots, you won’t be able to break it no matter how much you try.
If you didn’t know about eggs you should check out this video, it helps demonstrate how the hard spots of objects work and it’s really entertaining.
But unlike an egg, turtle shells are a lot tougher, and a lot more complex.
Final Thoughts
So, do snakes eat turtles? Yes, they do. But they only do so very rarely, since turtles are not that easy to catch or swallow.
If you would like to know more things about turtles that we touched upon in this article but didn’t go into depth, like how fast they are, how hard their shell is, etc. You can check out these articles:
- How Fast Are Turtles? (a Turtle That Can Reach 150 MPH)
- How Hard Is a Turtle Shell? (+Videos and Pictures)
- What Are the Predators of Turtles?
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