Do Turtles Hibernate? (with Videos)

There is a lake close to where I live, and it’s usually filled with turtles during the summer months. But now that it’s starting to get colder it’s impossible to find any turtle in that area, and this made me wonder do turtles hibernate? So I decided to do some research on this subject, here is what I found out.

Do turtles hibernate? Yes, turtles do hibernate during the winter. Most aquatic turtle species will hibernate at the bottom of a lake, or in a similar place. And most land turtles will dig holes where they will hibernate.

Most animals will just simply sleep when they hibernate, but turtles do things a little differently. When hibernating, aquatic turtles gain some new abilities like breathing underwater. While other turtles will hibernate during the summer. During hibernation turtles do a lot of interesting things that no other animals can do, so let’s take a closer look at how turtles hibernate, and what makes them so different from other animals.

Hibernation

First, let’s see what hibernation actually means. 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.

That is the basic explication of what hibernation means. While this explanation covers the basic facts it doesn’t explain how it actually happens, and it doesn’t cover the different things that only certain species can do. So let’s move on to turtles and see how they do it.

How turtles hibernate

Unlike most animals that hibernate, turtles are reptiles. And this means that they are cold-blooded animals. Cold-blooded animals are not able to generate body heat and they rely on the surrounding temperature to heat their body. So turtles will observe very easily subtle changes in the temperature.

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. This should give you an idea of how much they slow down during hibernation.

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 for up to 5 months. They can also survive for 5 to 8 months without any food or water. The amount of time they can do those things varies from species to species, the numbers that I gave you are just some averages.

The fact that turtles don’t need to generate heat to warm their bodies is also very helpful for them because, unlike mammals that hibernate, turtles don’t need to use energy to warm their bodies. This also means that they have to be very careful with the place where choose to hibernate. So the fact that they are cold-blooded has its advantages and disadvantages when it comes to hibernation.

Turtles are able to do all those amazing things because they reduce their metabolic rate. But reducing the metabolic rate can also have some unpleasant side effects. One of the bad things that happen is that they have a hard time getting rid of the lactic acid that accumulates. Lactic acid is the same thing that gives us muscle soreness, so you can imagine how unpleasant it can be for the turtle to wake up after a long sleep with muscle cramps all over the body.

To neutralize the lactic acid turtles use magnesium and calcium that they’ve stored in their shells. If they didn’t do that the lactic acid build-up would be too big, and they wouldn’t be able to wake up from hibernation at all.

The calcium and magnesium that they used would have helped them grow, but because getting rid of the lactic acid was more important they had to use it for that. This is another bad side effect, turtles won’t be able to grow when they hibernate. And growing isn’t something superficial for turtles, it’s something that can save their life. The bigger they get the fewer predators will come after them.

But in the end, even if they don’t grow it was definitely worth it, because they managed to survive the winter.

Now let’s take a closer look at the specific things that aquatic and land turtles do when they hibernate.

How aquatic turtles hibernate

Aquatic turtles spend most of their time in or near lakes, ponds, or rivers. So it’s normal that those are also the places where they will hibernate.

Aquatic turtles usually have two preferred ways to hibernate, underwater or covered in mud.

In general, most turtles are able to spend around 30 minutes underwater before they have to come out for oxygen. But when they are hibernating they are able to spend months underwater without having to come out to get oxygen. The reason why they are able to do this is that they have a cloaca.

The cloaca is the posterior orifice that serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive and urinary tract.

The main way a turtle breaths it’s through its nose, all turtles have small holes on their face that act as any normal nose would, when it comes to breathing, and of course they have two lungs where the air is transported. Until now there is nothing different in the way a turtle is breathing than the way you and I are breathing, they inhale air into their lungs and then they exhale it, but the way things work on the inside is completely different.

When you inhale air, you can observe that your chest becomes smaller and when you exhale it becomes bigger, this happens because you have flexible ribs, turtles on the other hand have a shell that is not flexible at all. Since turtles don’t have this flexibility they have no use for the lung and muscle setup that we and most mammals have. Instead, turtles have muscles that pull the body outwards, towards the opening of the shell, to allow it to inhale, and more muscles to squish the turtle’s guts against its lungs to make it exhale.

The cloaca works in a similar way to the lungs, when the turtle is inside the water the cloaca will act like a pump that will suck water inside and after it gathered all the oxygen from it, it will expel the water out, and then it will start over. Due to the way things are arranged on the inside of the turtle this process is less exhausting than normal breathing.

Even if using the cloaca is less exhausting for the turtle, in normal circumstances a turtle won’t be able to survive for long periods of time using only the cloaca. But when they hibernate they need considerably less oxygen, and the cloaca can produce that amount without too much effort.

So the cloaca is the perfect mechanism for hibernating turtles, it requires very little energy to function, and it provides the exact amount of oxygen.

If you own an aquatic turtle and you want to see your turtle using its cloaca to breathe, you can easily do so. Just look at the back end of the turtle when it’s swimming around, if you spend 15 minutes looking you have pretty big chances of seeing it in action.

You can find more information about the cloaca in this article if you want to know more about it.

But to be able to use the cloaca, the lake, or pond where they hibernate must have oxygen in it. So if the surface completely freezes over the oxygen in the water will probably be gone in a month or two, and this is not a great situation for most animals that live in that lake.

But as I’ve mentioned before turtles are able to survive months without oxygen so even if the oxygen from the water is completely gone they should still be able to survive the winter.

I’ve mentioned before that turtles also like to hibernate in mud. This is because mud can offer them protection from the cold weather and protection from predators.

Here is a video of a turtle being dug out of the hole and moved to a safer place:

When choosing a place to hibernate turtles will be interested in two things. Protection from the cold weather and protection from predators.

Usually, a lake or a pond will offer them the best chances to survive. But this doesn’t mean that every hole in the ground with some water in it is good. Turtles choose to hibernate in water that is deep enough so it won’t freeze completely. Turtles are able to survive in harsh conditions, but they have their limits, and being frozen is one of them.

This is why aquatic turtles sometimes prefer to hibernate covered in mud, or to find burrows, or to dig a hole where they can hibernate.

Now let’s move to land turtles.

How land turtles hibernate

Land turtles, as the name implies, spend most of their time on land. And as you would expect they will also hibernate on land, and not in water.

Unlike aquatic turtles, land turtles don’t have a favorite place where they hibernate. They will hibernate in any place that will provide the proper protection. So you can find land turtles hibernating anywhere, you can find them in a pile of leaves, you can find them in a tree hollow, in a burrow, or in a hole in the ground.

Most of them share the same survival capacities as aquatic turtles, except for the underwater breathing part. But in rest they can endure the same conditions, they can spend the same amount of time without oxygen, food, or water. Of course, those things are different from species to species, but there are no differences based on the fact that some of them live on land, while the others spend most of their time in the water.

Here is a video of a tortoise waking up from hibernating in a hole in the ground:

And here is a video of a tortoise who just woke up from hibernating and just got out of the ground:

Speaking of turtles that spend a lot of time in the water, let’s see what the sea turtles are doing during cold periods of time.

Do sea turtles hibernate ?

Yes, some sea turtle species hibernate, while others migrate to warmer places.

The way sea turtles hibernate is very similar to the way aquatic turtles hibernate. The first thing that they do is to find a suitable place, just because they spend a lot of time in the ocean doesn’t mean that they can go very deep, so they must find a place that is close to the shore. The Gulf of Mexico is one place where sea turtles choose to hibernate.

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.

Sea turtles also use their cloaca to get oxygen when they are hibernating. And the whole hibernating process is identical to the process that aquatic turtles go through.

Other sea turtle species will migrate to warmer places so that they don’t have to hibernate. The process is very simple. When they feel that the winter is starting to approach in an area, they just swim somewhere else where it’s warmer.

When do turtles start to hibernate ?

Most turtles will start hibernating in October when the weather usually starts to get colder. At that point, their metabolic rate starts to slow down slowly until they reach their hibernating metabolic rate.

But it all depends on the weather, not on what month it is. The seasons were never an exact thing, it’s always possible to have relatively warm weather in October and November, or to have cold weather in April. So it usually depends on the weather not what month it is. But in general, October is the month most turtles start to hibernate.

When do turtles stop hibernating ?

March is usually when the weather starts to get warmer and when most turtles get out of hibernation. But again it depends more on temperature than on what month it is.

Most turtles will resume their normal activities when the temperature is between 55 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit ( 13 or 15 degrees Celsius ).

When a turtle gets out of hibernation it will need a couple of weeks before it can resume its normal activities, like eating or drinking. There are two reasons why they do this.

The first is that they need to gather some heat so that their metabolic rate goes up so everything goes back to normal. And secondly, this is also a defense mechanism, in case the weather starts to get cold again they will be able to return to hibernation very fast.

Turtles are also able to do one other interesting thing very similar to hibernation. Sometimes when it gets cold outside turtles will not enter in a state of hibernation, but in a state of brumation.

Brumation

Brumation is very similar to hibernation, but with one key difference. During hibernation, the turtles are asleep, while during brumation they are awake.

During brumation all processes in the body start to slow down, this includes their heart rate, the rate at which they breathe, etc. During brumation turtles also don’t eat food, or they eat very little food.

Turtles start brumating when the weather gets cold, but not cold enough for them to start hibernating. A lot of pet turtles brumate during the winter months.

When turtles are brumating they do very little, they rarely bask, they don’t look for food or for water, they just walk around, or sometimes they just stay in the same place for hours without doing anything.

Not too much can be said about brumation, it’s just a state in which turtles go in when it’s cold outside, but not cold enough for them to hibernate. And when they are in this state they don’t do anything.

Here is a video of a tortoise that is in the middle of brumation:

At the beginning of the article I’ve mentioned that not all turtles will hibernate, during the winter, some of them will hibernate during the summer. Hibernation during the summer is called aestivation.

Aestivation

Hibernation and aestivation are identical processes. The only difference is that turtles hibernate during the winter and aestivate during the summer. But not all turtles will aestivate, only a few species that live in the desert, and other places with very hot weather will do so.

During the winter turtles hibernate because it’s too cold for them to find any food, any water, and to live in general. The same thing happens for turtles that live in the desert, during the summer months. It gets too hot for them to be able to find any food or water and to live in general.

During those hot months the metabolism of the turtles will start to slow down, and they will usually dig a hole in the ground, or they will stay in the water, or they will cover themselves with mud or the best substrate that they have at their disposal. After that, they will wait for the hot weather to pass.

The key to survival is to find a place where they will be away from the direct heat of the sun. When turtles aestivate they don’t have any way to hydrate themselves. So if they end up in direct sunlight when they are aestivating, it might be the end for them.

As I said aestivation and hibernation are the same processes, just in different conditions. During both of them, turtles reduce their metabolic rate so they use very little food, water, oxygen, and energy. And they basically sleep until the bad weather passes.