Do Turtles Scream? (With Videos)

Occasionally when I interact with my turtles, they will let out a faint scream. The strange thing is that they don’t always do that, and there is nothing in particular that I am doing to make them scream. So, to find out why turtles hiss I decided to do some research, and share it with everybody that has the same question. Here is what I found out.

Turtles don’t have any vocal cords so they can’t scream. But during certain movements the air inside their body is removed abruptly, thus making sounds similar to a scream.

Despite their lack of vocal cords, turtles can make a lot of noises, some of them can sound dangerous, while some are outright funny. So let’s take a look at how turtles make the screaming sound.

How the Turtle Hissing Sound Is Produced

The first unexpected and major thing that I found during my research is that turtles don’t have any vocal cords. So, unlike other animals that use their vocal cords to produce sounds, turtles don’t. The scream is actually produced by the air that is being expelled from their lungs. As strange as it sounds, it actually makes sense. But for it to make sense you have to look at when turtles make the hissing sound.

Turtles will only make the screaming sound when they quickly retract to their shells. When they get scared for any reason, like a strange sound, or something suddenly appearing before them, etc. turtles will rush into their shells and hide. When they retract into their shells they need to make room for their head and limbs. And they do this by eliminating excess air from their lungs. When the air from the lungs is quickly eliminated it will involuntarily produce a sound.

You can think of the turtle’s lungs as a balloon that is filled with air. If you let small quantities of air get out over a long period of time, it will do so without producing too much sound. But if you start to suddenly squeeze it and force the air out it will produce a powerful noise that can sometimes be comparable to a scream.

How a Screaming Turtle Sounds

Here are two videos I found on youtube, the first one is titled “Screaming Turtle” and the second is “Hissing Turtle”. Here they are.

As you can see the sound is the same, despite the title of the video. This is because what we call an animal scream is up to each person, some will consider it a hiss, while others will consider it a scream.

While doing the research for this article I also found videos like this one, where you can definitely say that this is a scream:

But this video is 100% fake, there is no turtle in the world that can make such a sound, by letting the air in its body out.

The Purpose of the Scream

Taking into consideration the way the sound is produced we definitely have to say that the first purpose of the scream is to make room for the turtle in its shell and prevent the lungs from being damaged. If the air wouldn’t be expelled the turtle would be hitting its lungs every time it would quickly retract in its shell, and that can happen quite a few times a day.

Besides preventing the turtle from hurting itself, the scream has another purpose as well. And that is to intimidate any potential attacker. While the scream itself is not very scary, it can help the turtle intimidate an animal that is attacking.

When turtles defend themselves they will usually stay retracted in their shells and when they see an opening they will quickly get out and try to bite, after that they will quickly retract to their shells. When they retreat to their shells they will also produce a scream.

Here is a video of a turtle that is trying to defend itself from a person who is filming it, in this video you can see how the turtle will try to quickly bite, and then it will retract to its shell and scream or hiss to further intimidate the “attacker”:

So while the scream by itself is not very effective, combined with the way turtles defend themselves, it can actually be quite efficient.

What Means Of My Turtle Screams When I Touch It?

If your turtle is always screaming when you interact with it, it means that your turtle is scared. There are a lot of reasons why a turtle might get scared, as they are not the bravest creatures in the world.

If you just got your turtle, then it’s perfectly normal for them to get scared easily, they just got in a new environment with things that it has never seen before, noises that it didn’t hear until now, and now it has people that interact with it. So it will take a while to get accustomed to all those new things. After a while, it will probably stop getting scared so easily and will make the hissing sound less often.

Overall when a turtle screams it means it got scared and had to quickly retract into its shell. And as I said there are a lot of things that can scare a turtle. There is no solution to stop the sound, except for being gentler around your turtle and trying not to scare it.

If you want more tips on how to properly interact with your turtle you can always check out the Care Guides Section of this site where you will find hundreds of articles that will better interact and care for your turtle.

Final Thoughts

While turtles can scream, the way they do it is not very similar to the way we do it. We use our vocal cords to generate the sound, while they do it involuntarily by quickly retracting into their shells. Due to these differences, the scream will never be comparable to that of a human.

I hope this article answers all of your questions, if you have any more questions you can always leave them in the comment section and I will answer them as soon as possible. And if you want to know more things about turtles you should check out the Turtle Facts section of the site, where you will find a lot of interesting articles, here are just a few examples out of the hundreds of articles:

Do Turtles Outgrow Their Shells? (With Pictures)

How Fast Are Turtles? (a Turtle That Can Reach 150 MPH)

Do Turtles Poop Out of Their Mouths? With Video