How to Tell If Your Baby Turtle Is Male or Female + Pictures

If you just become the new owner of a pet turtle you most likely want to know if your new friend is a boy or a girl. Unfortunately finding out the gender of a baby turtle can be a little tricky, but with this short guide, you will be able to easily tell if your turtle is male or female.

You can determine the gender of a baby turtle by looking at the following characteristics:

The size of the shell
The length of the claws
The length of the tail
The position of the cloaca
The size of the snout
The color of the eyes
The shell pattern

Now let’s take a closer look at the difference between male and female turtles, how to spot them, and when you can start looking for them.

Differences Between Male and Female Turtles

Unlike other animals turtles don’t have any obvious physical differences between genders, so the secret lies in details.

In the case of baby turtles it can be a little more difficult to determine their gender, but not entirely impossible. Over time most of those differences will become more obvious, but when they are little they are quite hard to observe, but not impossible, so let’s have a look at what those differences are.

Size

In general female turtles are bigger than male turtles. So if you have two turtles that are about the same age and one of them is clearly bigger than the other then the smaller one is most likely the male and the bigger one is the female.

Photo by D.Fletcher on Flickr

In a lot of animal species the females are bigger than the males, after all, they are spending the most time with the babies and they have to be able to protect them. While turtles don’t take care of their young, they still carry the eggs inside them for a while, so they need to be bigger to have enough space for them, and that is one of the biological reasons why females are bigger than males.

Claws

Males have considerably bigger claws than females. If both of your turtles are the same size you can’t exactly tell if they are both females or both males, but by looking at the claws you can easily tell if one of them is a male, or if both of them are male or female.

Female Red Eared Slider. Photo by Jim, the Photographer on Flickr

Turtles don’t use their claws for too many things besides digging and fighting off predators. But the males of some turtle species will use their claws to attract females during the courtship phase, they do this by hitting their claws together and producing sounds that seem to attract the females. The claws also allow the males to have a better grip when they are mating with the females after a successful courtship.

The Tail

Females have shorter and thicker tails, while males have longer and skinnier tails. This is usually a very good way to tell the gender of a turtle, even if it’s just a baby.

Just make sure that you look very closely at the tip of their tail. A lot of shops keep small turtles in tight crowded spaces where they can occasionally nip each other’s tails by mistake. So look carefully because you could mix up a male turtle with a female because the tail was nipped.

Female Red Eared Slider. Photo by birder125 on Flickr

Male Red Eared Slider. Photo by Jon Sullivan on Flickr

Position of the Cloaca

Both males and females have a cloaca, the big difference where it is positioned. The cloaca is the posterior orifice that serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive and urinary tract.

Females have the cloaca positioned at the base of their tail, while males have it positioned near the middle of the tail, and sometimes a little closer to the end of the tail.

Turtles use the cloaca for a lot of things, they use it when they lay the eggs, they use it when they fertilize the eggs, they use it to breathe underwater, and a lot more. If you want to know more about the cloaca check out this article: Do Turtles Have Gills?

Snout

Males have slightly longer and pointier snouts than females. The difference is very subtle but if you look very carefully you can notice it. The only thing is that this difference can only be observed when turtles are slightly older, so if your turtles have just reached maturity you might not notice the difference just yet, but as the turtles get older this difference should start to become more and more obvious.

As much as I’ve researched I haven’t been able to find a reason or use for this slight difference in shape, so at the moment there is probably no information about this, or maybe it doesn’t have any benefit at all. The only interesting thing I found about this is that during the courtship phase some male turtles will shoot a jet of water through their noses in the faces of the females, to attract them. This is not necessarily correlated to the difference in shape but it’s definitely funny.

Color of the Eyes

Some turtles belonging to certain species have different eye colors based on their gender. For example, the male common box turtles and the spotted turtles often have eyes that are colored in different shades of red. The females on the other hand usually have yellow or yellow-brown eyes. There is no known benefit of the red color, but most biologists assume that it can be an advantage during the mating season and that females could be attracted to male turtles that have red eyes.

Male Box Turtle. Photo by c w on Flickr

Female Box Turtle. Photo by Karen on Flickr

But this is not the case with all turtle species, so is not always a reliable way to tell apart male turtles from female turtles. And there can always be a few turtles that just have a different eye color than the rest. There are even turtles that have blue eyes, but if you want to know more about that you should read this article: Do Turtles Change Colors?

Different Patterns

Some turtles belonging to certain species have different patterns on their shells. Again this is not the case with the majority of turtles, and since patterns are not always consistent it can be hard to tell them apart.

I can’t give you any pointers about what kind of pattern a male or a female should have since they can differ from species to species and individual to individual, and there are also more than 300 species so it won’t be practical. But if you want to find out what those 300 species are then you should check out this list: A Complete List of All Turtle Species.

When It’s the Best Time to Determine the Gender of a Turtle

As I said it can be very difficult to determine the gender of a turtle when they are just a baby, but not entirely impossible. If your turtle is just a couple of months old it’s very likely that you won’t be able to spot any of the differences that we talked about.

The best time to determine the gender of a turtle is when it reaches maturity.

Unlike most animals, turtles reach maturity not only based on age but on the size as well. While it’s true that size and age are correlated, the size of a turtle is influenced greatly by the quantity and quality of food that it can eat, so if they have more food at their disposal it will reach maturity faster. As result pet turtles mature faster than wild turtles.

In general, you can expect turtles to reach maturity somewhere between 3 and 5 years, depending on their diet. For most turtle species a male is considered mature when he reaches a length of at least 4 inches (10 centimeters), females are considered to have reached the maturity when they are about 5 inches (12 centimeters) in length.

So unfortunately until your turtle reaches maturity it’s impossible to be 100% sure if it’s a male or a female. I know that this is not something that most people like to hear, but there is no way to know for sure. Even scientists that study turtles have to wait until a turtle reaches maturity to know their gender for sure.

The good news is that the gender of your turtle won’t influence too much how you should take care of it, the only difference will appear when your turtle reaches maturity.

What Is the Difference When It Comes to Taking Care of the Turtle

There aren’t many differences, except for a couple of small ones. A female turtle will lay eggs while a male turtle won’t. Even if there is no male is around the female will still lay eggs, the only difference is that those eggs won’t be fertilized.

Taking care of a female turtle that is about to lay eggs is not very hard, you barely have to do anything, so don’t worry about this part. But if you are curious about what you have to do when your turtle is pregnant you can read this article: How to Tell if Your Turtle Is Pregnant.

And the female turtle will eat a little more since she is bigger but not by a noticeable amount so don’t worry about that.

In the end, I would say that it’s probably a little easier to have a male turtle because they won’t get pregnant, but in the end, there is no difference between them for you as a turtle owner.