Over the years I’ve seen my turtle do a lot of strange little things, but one that got my attention was when for no reason it was opening its mouth and keeping it that way for no apparent reason. So I started doing some research to see why my turtle was acting this way. Here is what I found out.
The most common reasons why a turtle keeps its mouth open are yawning, aggressive behavior, hunger, and respiratory infections. A turtle that keeps its mouth open for long periods of time is usually a sign that there is something wrong with its health or environment.
As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why your turtle keeps its mouth open, some of them are nothing major, like yawning, but some of them can be a sign of serious health problems. So, let’s take a closer look at each possible cause, and see why your turtle keeps its mouth open.
Yawning
Yawning is quite common among turtles, but due to their unique anatomy, it can be quite hard to tell if a turtle is simply yawning or it keeps its mouth open.
The main purpose of yawning is to get more oxygen in the body, more exactly into the lungs, which then move the oxygen into the blood. Turtles, humans, and every animal in the world yawn for this exact reason.
The most common time you will see a turtle yawn is right after it wakes up from its sleep, when it’s tired, or when it’s resting.
After turtles wake up, the amount of oxygen in their blood is low since they can’t breathe that well while sleeping. So one of the first things that they will do is yawn, which will help them get their oxygen levels back to normal.
When turtles are tired, but they also to keep themselves awake, they will yawn in order to increase the oxygen level in their blood, so that they can have more energy.
The best way to tell if your turtle is yawning is to look at how long it keeps its mouth open. If it happens for just a few seconds then it yawns, if it lasts for a few minutes then it’s something else.
If your turtle is yawning from time to time then there is nothing to worry about, but if it happens excessively, then it could be a sign of a respiratory infection.
Respiratory Infection
If your turtle keeps its mouth open for long periods of time or opens it a lot of times during the day, it might suffer from a respiratory infection. But simply keeping its mouth open is not the only sign.
A respiratory infection is usually followed by one or more of the following signs:
- Wheezing
- Excess mucus in the mouth
- Mucus coming out of the eyes or nose
- A lack of appetite
The best way to see if your turtle suffers from any health problem is to go to the vet. And this is the only way to get proper treatment. If you suspect that your turtle has a health problem you should go to the vet as soon as possible.
When turtles suffer from a respiratory illness, they will naturally have a hard time breathing, so they will try to keep their mouths open in order to get more air in their lungs.
If you suspect that there is even a small chance that your turtle is suffering from a respiratory infection you should take it to the vet. In the beginning, they are easily treatable and not that dangerous, but if left untreated they can become a real problem.
Now let’s move to another possible reason, that is not as unpleasant.
Aggressive Behavior
Turtles can become aggressive due to a few reasons, some of the most common are aggressive handling, lack of food, and living with other turtles.
The best way to see if this is the case, simply have to see if your turtle tries to bite you when you get close.
If you want to know more about turtle bites, how bad they are, how to avoid them, and how to make your turtle not want to bite you, you should check out this article: Do Turtles Bite? How Hard Do They Bite and What to Do, where I cover all of those topics and more.
Hunger
How much you should feed a turtle has been a very debated subject for a very long time, but after all those years of debate, we finally have the best answer. And that is the size of the head method, and the method works like this:
The simplest way to put this method into practice is to find a small container, like a medicine cup, a shot glass, or a bottle cap. This container has to be approximately the same size as the head of your turtle, without the neck. Then you fill that container to the top, and then you can feed the food inside the container to your turtle.
You don’t always have to use a container, you can always just estimate the food that you would need to fill its head. If you sometimes give your turtle a little too much food, and sometimes you give it a little less, there will be no problem. Your turtle won’t be affected by small differences.
This method works great because it takes into consideration the size of the turtle, and gives you a fixed amount of food that you have to give your turtle. And as the turtle grows the amount of food will grow with it.
This method was an extract from the article: How Much and How Often Should I Feed My Turtle? (+Schedule), if you want to know what other methods are out there, what you should feed your turtle, or you want a premade feeding schedule you should check out the article for all of this and more.
If you didn’t feed your turtle using this method, or you simply didn’t give it enough food, then there is a very good chance that this is why your turtle was keeping its mouth open.
Final Thoughts
Those are the most common reason why a turtle will keep its mouth open. In most cases, I would say that it is a bad sign since something is not going right, but how bad it is, really depends on the cause. The good part is that all of them can usually be solved quite easily.
I hope this article answered all of your questions about turtles and why they keep their mouths open. But, in case there is anything else that you would like to know, feel free to leave a comment in the section below, I will do my best to answer it as soon as possible.
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