Do Turtles Have a Good Memory?

There have been countless discussions about turtles and their memory, some people say that they have a very good memory, while others say that turtles can’t remember anything for longer than a few seconds, so who is right?

Turtles have limited short-term memory. But they make up for that with their excellent long-term memory, which is especially useful for survival. The memory of a turtle is also very selective, and most of the things that it chooses to remember are related to survival.

The memory of a turtle works very differently from the way our memory works, this is mostly because turtles have a more primitive way of looking at things, compared to us humans.

How the Memory of a Turtle Works

As I said turtles don’t have the best short-term memory but they do have a great long-term memory, but what does this mean?

Short-term memory is limited, but long-term memory is considered limitless. But in the case of turtles very few things are considered important enough to be remembered indefinitely.

Turtles are able to recall very few details about the things that just happened. But if the turtle thinks that some of those details are important for its survival, some of them will get transferred to the long-term memory. Despite the fact that long-term memory is limitless, there is a limit to the complexion of the details that turtles are able to perceive and understand.

Here is an example of a study that was done at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, to test the memory of turtles.

Scientists have gathered a group of 6 turtles and thought them 3 different tasks:

Scientists thought the turtles to bite a colored ball attached to the end of a stick
The turtles were thought to walk 6 feet towards the ball and bite it.
Scientists assigned a specific color to each tortoise and presented them with two differently colored balls. One was the assigned color, while the other was a different color.

The turtles were given food in exchange for learning to do those things, and for turtles food means survival, so they were more than happy to participate in this experiment.

After all turtles mastered the 3 tasks, the scientists stopped doing them for 3 months, after which they did the test again to see what the turtles could remember.

All 6 turtles performed the first 2 tasks on their first try, but none could perform the third task correctly. So, they re-trained them to be able to perform the third task and took another break from the test for 9 years.

After 9 years have passed they did the tests. And again all turtles could perform the first 2 tasks perfectly, but none could perform the third, which proved to be too complex for the turtles.

There are 3 conclusions that can be drawn from this experiment. The first one is that turtles do indeed have a very good long-term memory, as they are able to remember things that they were thought 9 years ago.

The second one is that there is a limit to how complex are the things a turtle can remember.

And the third is that turtles can learn to do tricks. If you want to know more about what kind of tricks you can teach a turtle you should check out this article: How Smart Are Turtles? (The Unexpected Answer).

What Turtles Choose to Remember

As you can see the memory of a turtle is very selective. They only choose to remember things that are related to:

Survival
Food
Basking
Reproduction

Survival

The first thing a turtle will think about is survival, everything else comes after. This means that turtles will remember areas that are dangerous, things that can harm them, animals that want to hunt them, etc., and will avoid those areas, animals, objects, and so on.

At first glance, it might seem that turtles are cowards, but that is not true. Those are the logical things to do if your first priority is survival, there is no reason to do something dangerous if all you want to do is survive.

We also have this instinct, but it acts a little different than that of turtles. One of our primary thoughts is also survival, but sometimes due to our different way of thinking, we will end up placing some other things above that. I am sure that you’ve heard of stories of parents putting themselves in harm’s way just to protect their children, turtles don’t naturally have that way of thinking and they will always place their survival in the first place.

Food

The next thing that it’s on a turtle’s mind is food. They will always look for food. And they will always remember where are the places where they can get food.

When you don’t have anything else to do, and food is a very important part of survival, you will spend most of your time looking for food.

When turtles are in captivity and they feel safe in the place they are, their main priority becomes food, they are not interested in toys, like cats and dogs are, or anything else, in particular, they just care about food.

Basking

Another thing that your turtle cares about is basking. Basking is very important for them since it allows them to maintain good health, so finding a good basking area is very important for them.

In the wild where there are few basking spots, you can sometimes see turtles fighting over a basking spot. If a turtle is willing to fight for something you can be sure that it’s very important to them.

Reproduction

The fourth thing that turtles care about is reproduction. Turtles have the natural urge to want to pass their genes further to other generations.

It’s not uncommon for two or more turtles to fight to win the right to mate with a female. And again you can see how important this is for turtles since they are willing to fight over it.

When turtles fight among themselves it will not be a brutal fight, they usually end without any turtle being too hurt. Those fights are more to prove who is superior and not to seriously injure the other turtles.

Can Turtles Remember You, Their Owner?

So now we know that turtles can remember things, and while they might not be the best at remembering details, they are able to remember things that are related to survival or food for a very long time. But what about your turtle and you, its owner, the person that is taking care of it and giving it food. Can your turtle remember you?

Yes, your turtle will recognize you, and they can easily tell the difference between you and other humans. Turtles have 5 senses, among those senses are hearing, seeing, and smelling. They can use those 3 senses to recognize you without any problem.

Now that you know that your pet turtle can recognize, let’s see what they think about you and how they see you. This might not be what you were expecting but they see you as the person who brings food to them, more or less a food dispenser. I know this doesn’t sound nice at all and it’s definitely not what you were hoping but you have to understand that for turtles that mean a lot. You are taking care of one of their most important needs and that is very important for them. In reality, you are also taking care of their protection and ensuring that they have a place to bask, but there is no way for them to know that.

Because you are the person that brings food, your turtle will start to develop some trust toward you. Not trust like you and I have in other people, but I think this is a good way to describe it. The way they manifest this trust is by not being aggressive toward you and cooperating with you. For example, they will not bite you when you handle them, but if a person that they don’t recognize tries to do it they will become aggressive toward them.

Taking into consideration the primitive way turtles are thinking, the trust that they show toward you is the most you can get out of them.

Can Turtles Remember Their Name?

But what about names, are turtles able to remember their names?

Turtles don’t remember their names, but technically speaking they are able to.

There have been a lot of tests, like the one I described at the start of the article, and some of those tests wanted to see if they can teach turtles to respond to certain sounds, and in the end, it was proved that they could.

This means that a turtle should, technically speaking, be able to remember its name, but on the other hand, there is no benefit in doing so, so they choose not to.

If it has nothing to do with food or survival in general, turtles have no motivation to learn. Even if a pet turtle has no reason to worry about food, security, or any other thing that turtles in the wild have to deal with, they don’t really know this, and they will always act as if there is a real danger of being attacked at any moment, or as is they could starve. So they have other priorities besides learning their name.

Final Thoughts

So turtles do have a good memory, a good long-term memory, but it’s very selective memory, and they only choose to remember things that are related to their survival.

I hope this article answered all of your questions about turtles and their ability to remember things. If there is anything else that you would like to ask, feel free to use the comment section below, I will do my best to answer all questions as soon as I see them.