Do Turtles Freeze in the Winter?

Do turtles freeze in the winter? This is a question that many people may wonder, particularly if they live in an area where winter temperatures can drop well below freezing. Turtles are fascinating animals with unique adaptations to their environments, but how do they survive during the cold winter months?

Turtles cannot survive freezing temperatures. During winter, most turtles hibernate at the bottom of a lake, where temperatures don’t reach the freezing point. Turtles that don’t hibernate in lakes, usually do so in a cave, or dig a hole in the ground, where they will be safe from the freezing temperature.

Turtles can’t generate their own body heat, so they are very reliant on the external temperature. So, when the winter comes, they have to find a place to hibernate.

Where Turtles Go in the Winter

When the temperature starts to drop, but not enough to freeze water, most semiaquatic turtles will go into a lake, and find a safe spot to hibernate. In most cases, that safe spot is at the bottom of the lake, since you won’t find too many predators down there, and the bottom of the lake is the warmest spot, during the winter.

If the nearby lake or pond is too shallow, and will freeze completely, or there is none nearby, turtles will burrow themselves underground and hibernate there until winter passes.

Other times they might simply choose to spend the winter hibernating under a big pile of leaves, or in a tree burrow.

Unlike other animals that make provisions for winter, turtles don’t need to since hibernation is a long uninterrupted sleep during which they don’t need to eat during, or even breathe too much for that matter.

How Turtles Hibernate

Hibernation is a state in which some mammals and reptiles will enter during cold periods. When they are in this state, they will reduce their metabolic rate, which means that they will use less energy, they won’t require any food or water, and they will sleep the whole time.

When the weather starts to get cold, the metabolism of a turtle will automatically start to slow down. And as a result, their hearts will start to slow down, along with all other processes that happen in their bodies.

In general the heart of a turtle beats between 40 and 45 times per minute, when they hibernate they will slow down to around 10 beats per minute. As a result of this slow down they will need considerably less oxygen, sometimes due to unfortunate situations turtles don’t have access to oxygen at all, but because they are hibernating they are able to live without oxygen up to 5 months.

So this is the short version. But there is one more thing that I would like to quickly cover, and that’s how turtles manage to breathe through their buts while they are underwater.

You might have heard at some point something like: turtles are able to breathe through their butts. And as weird as it sounds that is kind of true, the cloaca is positioned at the end of the turtle’s body, so it can be considered the butt of the turtle. But the cloaca acts differently than how you would normally expect a “back end” to work. The cloaca has 4 important roles: execution, urination, reproduction and breathing. 

The cloaca works in a similar way to the lungs, when the turtle is underwater the cloaca will act like a pump that will suck water inside, and after it gathers all the oxygen from it, it will expel the water out and then it will start over.

If you want to know more about how the cloaca works, you can check out this article: Do Turtles Have Gills? (with Pictures and Videos). And if you want to know more about hibernation, you can check this article out: Do Turtles Hibernate? (with Videos).

Now let’s return to where turtles go during the winter.

Where Tortoises Go in the Winter

Land turtles, also known as tortoises, will act very similarly to aquatic turtles when the winter comes.

But since they can’t survive underwater, they will mostly go underground. If they are unable to find a good spot underground, they will also look for other options like, piles of leaves, tree hollows, and caves.

Tortoises choose their hibernating spot using the same principles as aquatic turtles, so they mostly look for a place where they will be safe from predators, the cold, and snow.

Here is a video showing a tortoise waking up from hibernation in somebody’s backyard:

Before we talk about what sea turtles do in the winter, let’s take a quick look at what turtle hibernation is, since we talked so much about it.

Where Sea Turtles Go in the Winter

Unlike their relatives, sea turtles don’t always hibernate during the winter, some of them prefer to migrate.

Those that hibernate do it the same way as the rest. The first thing that they do is try to find a good and safe spot. One of the most popular spots is The Gulf of Mexico. After they find a suitable place to hibernate they will dig a hole that is usually several inches deep where they will cover themselves with mud, after that they will start hibernating.

The turtles that choose to migrate, will simply start moving to another warmer place as soon as they start feeling that the temperature starts to drop.

The routes taken by the sea turtles are almost the same every year, but lately due to the climate changes they started to change a little. But overall they haven’t changed that much.

Here is a map that shows how turtles migrate in the Atlantic Ocean.

Final Thoughts

So, turtles don’t typically freeze during the winter. As they take a lot of precautions to stay relatively warm, while they are hibernating.

I hope this article answered all of your questions about turtles and whether or not they freeze during the winter. If you have any other questions regarding turtles, feel free to leave them in the comment section, my colleagues and I regularly check the comment section and answer all the questions that we can find.

Related Questions

How long can a turtle stay underwater ? It depends on the turtle, most sea turtles will be able to go for at least 5 hours without breathing, most aquatic turtles should be able to stay underwater for at least 20–30 minutes, land turtles on the other hand are not very good at staying underwater so 1 minute is the average you can expect them to be able to stay underwater. Here is a list of average times a turtle can spend underwater:

• Box turtle – 1 – 2 minutes
• Desert tortoise – 1 – 2 minutes
• Snapping turtle – 20 – 30 minutes
• Red-eared slider – 20 – 30 minutes
• Map turtle – 20 – 30 minutes
• Green sea turtle – 7 – 10 hours
• Leatherback sea turtle – 7 – 10 hours
• Kemp’s Ridley – 7 – 10 hours

Can turtles see humans? Yes, turtles are able to see humans very well, and they are also able to distinguish between us, based just on physical appearance.

Should I live the lights on for my pet turtle during the night? No, turtles don’t need a light during the night. But if you want to look at your turtle during the night, you can buy a special light just for that. They are very dim, usually red or blue lights, that were created just for that purpose.

How long should you leave a light on for a turtle? The best practice is to let the lights on the same amount of time that the sun is in the sky. The winter is the only exception, because the sun is up for a very short period of time. During the winter, you leave the lights on for 10 to 14 hours.

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