Common Snapping Turtle, The Best Pet Turtle?

[Music] well hi there this is a common snapping turtle and we often ask the question what is the best pet reptile that's a difficult question to answer there's a lot of things that factor in i'm going to have to run him down real quick and that's actually why we have multiple different categories we have a category called handle ability fortunately we don't have a category called film ability because this can be very different things calm down calm down this is not the easiest turtle to keep it's most certainly not the snuggliest turtle you could keep it's not the coolest looking turtle to keep but it is in my opinion the most worthwhile turtle to keep of them all now go get him snapping turtles are my favorite turtles and they're exciting good boy and that's why i'm so excited about this turtle who's bubba and my other little guy nipper snapping turtles are actually invasive here in utah which means they don't occur here naturally but they were brought here by people bubba here and nipper they're both actually rescues that were captured in the wild here in utah and at that point they need to be taken out of the wild so that they don't establish a population here though there probably are some already so if you notice when they walk they put their limbs directly underneath their body which is pretty atypical reptiles generally but when a reptile starts to get really heavy it's sort of the only way to walk and so you'll notice that you see this sort of a gate with crocodilians with dinosaurs and with snapping turtles and it's one of many things about them it is absolutely stinking rad but i am so darn excited about these two ah i'm just beside myself because i love snapping turtles so much and i'm excited to talk to you about them today to help you figure out if my favorite turtle which i'm telling you already is not the most reasonable pet turtle is the best pet turtle for you and to help us figure this out we're going to score the snapping turtle based on our five categories which are handleability care hardiness availability and upfront costs okay well we tried to put bubba on this table and obviously he's in a very uh active mood this evening and so who i've got with me right now is nipper who is a much younger common snapping turtle and i want to be clear when you get a common snapping turtle bubba is what you're getting but what you might think you're getting is something more like nipper who you know if this is all he was ever going to be this would be a very very reasonable beast indeed it's just that they don't stay like this but when it comes to handle ability we give the common snapping turtle a score of 3 out of 5 which given the challenge of handling bubba just now might seem like a shock especially you know given his size and the damage he could potentially inflict however handling snapping turtles is more about knowing how to handle them than really anything else common snapping turtles are one of the most flexible turtles you're ever gonna see in fact we mentioned earlier about the way that they walk and most turtles most most reptiles generally actually walk with their legs splayed out to the side and this is actually due in large part to the way that fish swim so fish swim side to side like this you've probably noticed this and as a result when fish first moved on to land uh you know they continued to bend side to side like this and and those that had paired fins out to the side where it could essentially walk when they would bend like that um and and that continues through to lizards and even crocodilians and things today they move like that and usually they keep their legs splayed out to the side however once they start to get really heavy it gets to be really hard to hold yourself like that if you don't believe me try doing a push-up stance like this or like this and see which way you can hold it longer it is hard to hold yourself like this when you get very heavy and so crocodilians and dinosaurs and mammals and snapping turtles all bring their limbs underneath their body and and this actually results in them having a very small and interestingly shaped plastron which is the bottom of the shell you see it's kind of shaped like a t like a little muscle man shirt then really their legs just pour out of it and that allows them to swivel their legs all the way underneath and it's not even a big deal for a turtle because turtle spines don't bend side to side or up and down because their spine is fused into their shell and so they don't lose anything really by bringing their legs underneath except for protection on the bottom and that works out okay for snapping turtles because snapping turtles don't use their shell for defense in the same way that most other turtles do they actually believe in a good offense as the best defense and they use this big old beacon head as their primary defense they've also got a really long neck really long they can actually reach back over their shell about two-thirds of the way over which means you can't pick them up in the same way that you would pick up most turtles not even in the way that you would pick up an alligator snapping turtle you can grab those right up behind their head in the back of their shell because they've got very short necks not the case with common snapping turtles that'll get you really the only places they can't reach would be their legs their tail and their bottom and so you'll notice even with the big turtle i'm very careful only to touch them in those areas many people will grab them in the way that is probably the easiest for you to grab a snapping turtle which is by the tail and lift it up and that works really well for you however it's really important to notice that the tail is a continuation of their vertebrae and it puts a ton of stress on their spine and you can actually end up dislocating their spine which can cause paralysis and death in these turtles and so that is not a good way to handle them i've also heard people handle them and i've i've tried this myself handling them by the back legs which is difficult to do because those back legs are strong and they've got big claws on them and they can move them and pull them out of your hands but it's probably a little bit safer for the turtle what i have found to be definitely the best way to do it and it's the way that you saw me handling bubba and i mean i i don't need as much support with this guy but when he gets bigger it's the way i'll handle him as well as i put one hand on the tail in order to stabilize the turtle so that i you know it doesn't rock off i don't drop it but then i support all the weight with my hand that's underneath the turtle you can do this even with the big ones and so you'll see that's how i handle bubba and that is the way to pick up a snapping turtle it's just the best by far you know you have a lot of control it keeps when you have that tail it keeps them from spinning around on you and grabbing you which especially a grumpy wild turtle they can totally do that but if you go up you get a hold of the tail but you don't pick them up by the tail you just use it to lift them up a little bit so you can slide a hand underneath and you can just support all their weight from underneath like this awesome and once you know how to do that handling a snapping turtle goes from being extremely difficult to actually really pretty easy for a turtle that heavy they may snap at you when you're holding them like this in fact you were trying to show that off bubba he never snapped at me today at least not so far but he was definitely showing off that that neck range a little bit and that quick motion can startle you and you just want to be careful that when it happens you're not going to drop the turtle because you get startled so expect them to do that from time to time but no if you're holding them right they can't get to you so you don't need to be afraid of it just be prepared for it long-term captive turtles can actually become very very good with handling i mean actually you can see this guy he's been in captivity longer than bubba bubba's only been in captivity a few weeks he's excellent but uh nipper here he's been in a little bit longer and you can see he's pretty darn laid back i've had snapping turtles when i was growing up that i could scratch him on top of the head and on the chin i honestly feel like i could probably do that with bubba um he's shown no signs of aggression that way but i don't think i'm gonna try it out they can definitely lure you into a sense of security i i'm not calling it a false sense of security because sometimes they are just genuinely pretty laid back and nice it's just you know you can get to feel very comfortable about them and suddenly you can allow yourself to get into places where they could reach you you know i've often commented that if bubba has a goal of biting me he's playing it perfectly because he is giving me every indication that he's just a sweetheart and just waiting for that one day when i let down my garden try to scratch him on the head or something and then whammo so let me ask you a question which is how bad would the bite be from a common snapping turtle when i see them online i see a lot of people commenting about how they're going to bite off your fingers and things and that is something that their cousin the alligator snapping turtle absolutely can do they can totally sever your fingers but i actually recently became very curious how strong exactly is the bite of a common snapping turtle i've never been bitten by one but watching them especially watching bubba i'm kind of under the impression it's not that strong and i know you might be thinking uh come again you know you you might be familiar with another one of my favorite turtles which is the matamata and we actually have a whole video on the bodacious way that the matamata feeds and the thing is the matamata is a suction feeder and so they primarily suck things into their mouth like a vacuum cleaner and they have notoriously weak jaws because their jaws are not really majorly involved in hunting unlike alligator snapping turtles common snapping turtles actually feed in that same way they use their neck to rapidly extend and create suction and they just suck things into their mouth and then they just kind of spit it back out momentarily give it a little chomp and swallow it down they can bite through things like carrots especially when they're large like bubba but it doesn't look to be that easy for them to do and so i started to do some research harel and others in 2002 they measured the bite force of a number of turtles including common snapping turtles and they actually measured the bite force of common snapping turtles to be somewhere between 208 and 226 newtons that's a measure of force and just to put that into some some perspective humans have an average bite force of somewhere between 300 and 700 newtons so actually quite a bit more than what was measured from these common snapping turtles that said if a human really bit you with intent to do you damage they could do some pretty catastrophic damage so 300 to 700 newtons is a lot of bite force and a snapping turtle probably has a sharper beak so that that factors in and you know comparable to a weak human jaw force i think you know the bite would be probably not as bad as you might imagine but i still don't want to be bitten that's to take home again it can be really easy to avoid their bite if you just know what you're doing so just hold them right and it's not going to be an issue if you're holding them appropriately really the worst thing to say can happen would be that the turtle would pee on you being a freshwater turtle they do pee a lot and so they they will pee on you from time to time the snap is fast and dramatic and so it can be very startling the thing i worry about the most honestly is just that i'll get startled and drop the turtle i'm not so worried about anything bad happening to me it's no worse than opening pillsbury products which i hate i'd like to take just a moment to thank our patrons at patreon who actually know all about how i respond to pillsbury products because a while back jason decided to torture me by making me open a whole bunch of pillsbury products so that is just one of the many perks that we have to being a patron on patreon but thank you sincerely for all that you do for us even though it forces jason to torture me they also as you saw earlier get big and heavy so even though it's not gonna bite you man they're really heavy and it's exhausting to carry them around and those claws they can be pretty nasty if you're holding them just right they actually can't kick you or can't kick you very much but when they do get you those are strong legs with big old powerful claws and it hurts but again you hold them right they can't kick you because they're turtles and turtles can't reach all the parts of their body very well turtles are great the take-home is that holding a snapping turtle is not like holding a bearded dragon or a ball python but if you know what you're doing it's very very manageable uh even for a big one as long as you can lift that much weight with one hand when it comes to care we give the common snapping turtle a score of four out of five for a water turtle the care for a snapping turtle is actually pretty darn easy that's except for the fact that it is a giant water turtle so there is that as a result you need to provide a pretty huge water area but we've got bubba in a great big trough that we got from the rescue from whence he came that is not his long-term enclosure but it is a good holding place while we build a much bigger pond for him and those can be reasonably good enclosures when it's a baby um providing a big space like that is still great the main thing is just make sure the water is not too terribly deep snapping turtles are they're okay swimmers but you definitely want to provide places where they can just stick their neck up to breathe without having to swim all the time it's kind of hard on them depending on how cold you allow your home to become you might not even have to heat the water which is great because it's a heck of a lot of water a good filter is a must unless you want to be doing massive water changes all the time because these guys can be pretty sloppy eaters the nice thing is though they're not very picky about water they can tolerate a large range of temperatures and phs so just you know don't let it get too hot or too too cold uh you know too acidic or too basic but they can accept a pretty wide range uva and uvb will be important for them interestingly enough you can set up a basking area and lamps in the enclosure and they may not really bask sometimes they will and sometimes they won't what i do with all of mine is i take them out and let them dry out thoroughly a few times a week and let them sit in the sun for for some time so they can get some uvb so if you can do that regularly you might not even need the lamps however some turtles love to bask so just experiment with it and see what works for yours feeding common snapping turtles is easy because they love everything not only do they love to eat but they also can go rather a long time without eating which is very convenient if you go on vacation or something like that obesity is honestly one of the main things to look out for you know and if you notice even this turtle that's a fairly healthy weight you know he kind of pours out of the shell and it can get much much more than that even this guy might need to go on a little diet you notice bubba he came to us very very generously proportioned and we we've actually been trying to put him on a little bit of a diet so we haven't been feeding him much fatter protein since he got here we offered him a little bit of watermelon for this video but he's been doing really well on a lot of vegetables because these guys are omnivores and so we're putting them on a little bit of a salad diet for a bit just generally they love protein but keep protein and fat kind of low and and like i said they're omnivores and they actually eat a surprising amount of vegetable matter so you can give them a lot of different veggies that are just generally good for turtles and like if you had a tortoise stuff that's good for them these guys are usually gonna like it too but they also love meat like fish preferably not goldfish they can be very high in the enzyme thyminase and that's not ideal they also love other sorts of whole vertebrate prey and invertebrate prey like crayfish and insects worms basically if it's ever been alive they probably want to eat it diversity of food is going to be the main key here just give them a wide variety of things to eat and just again make sure fat and protein are not too high even prepared diets can work there are a lot of good turtle foods that these guys will eagerly accept i wouldn't recommend it as their only food but it's pretty good to have on on standby you know cara is really actually very easy for an aquatic turtle they are gonna need a filter as we mentioned in a big water area because you know at the end of the day this is a 30 plus pound turtle but for a 30 plus pound turtle very very reasonable when it comes to hardiness we give the common snapping turtle a score of five out of five i don't know of a tougher reptile they're just tough as nails uh which is why they can become invasive in so many places avoid obesity make sure that they get access to some uvb they're probably gonna do great when it comes to availability we give the common snapping turtle a score of three out of five these guys are occasionally available in pet shops uh some expos are gonna have them they're gonna be available online anywhere where they're legal to ship and that's honestly what's gonna hurt them a little bit because they can become invasive they're illegal in some places and because they're native they're illegal in other places and so you're gonna need to check your local laws in some places you might not be able to get one at least not without permits in other places you could probably get one almost anywhere so it just depends when it comes to upfront costs we give the common stopping turtle a score of three out of five the turtle itself is very affordable even if you need to ship it it's really affordable the costs are all going to come down to that enclosure which needs to be huge and filters and lights and basking platform that kind of thing those can add up because it's an enormous turtle food which doesn't factor into this is also pretty affordable uh just get a wide diversity of things and that is why overall we give the common snapping turtle a score of 3.6 out of 5. due to their size common snapping turtles are not the ideal pet for most people the same is true for other totally rad animals like uh pegus and boas but these are incredible turtles i love them they're my very favorite turtles in the whole wide world if what you're looking for is a big interactive water dinosaur and a caiman is just a little bit too insane then the common snapping turtle might be the perfect pet reptile and pet turtle for you as always like and subscribe and we hope to see you real soon all right if we can get him to sit simmer down there it's like a calendar style should i be following him well yeah but i'm gonna have to bring it back okay there we go there we go running my dessert today calm down calm down good boy okay should add to that list not the easiest turtle to film especially when they get to be great big guys like bubba here oh yeah there you go buddy look at how great this guy is he's like a hamburger [Music] [Music] okay you've been a very good sport i really appreciate you common snapping turtles are my favorite turtles and they're exciting you need to calm down dude you are really hard to film

Channel: Clint's Reptiles

Views: 473,495

Keywords: Common snapping turtle, snapping turtle, snapper, common snapper, turtle pet, turtle care, pet snapping turtle, alligator snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina, common snapping turtle pet, best pet turtles, turtles, reptile, reptile care, pet reptile, red eared slider, mata mata, musk turtle, mud turtle, common snapping turtle bite force, box turtle, tortoise, water turtle, giant pet reptiles, alligator, Clint's Reptiles, Snake Discovery, bitten by an snapping turtle, bite

Id: Lwd4bPVHA6w

Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020