Endangered
Alligator snapping turtle
Macrochelys temminckii
M.
Appearance
The alligator snapping turtle is characterized by a large, heavy head, and a long, thick shell with three dorsal ridges of large scales (osteoderms), giving it an appearance reminiscent of the armoured ankylosaurs. M. Temminckii is a solid gray, brown, black, or olive-green in color, and often covered with algae. It has radiating yellow patterns around the eyes, serving to break up the outline of the eyes to keep the turtle camouflaged.
M. Temminckii is one of the heaviest living freshwater turtles in the world.
Even though not verified, a 183 kg (403 lb) alligator snapping turtle was found in Kansas in 1937, but the largest verifiable one is debatable. Another weighing 107 kg (236 lb) was housed at the Brookfield Zoo in suburban Chicago.
Range and habitat
The alligator snapping turtle is found primarily in freshwaters of the southeastern United States. It is found from the Florida Panhandle west to East Texas, north to southeastern Kansas, Missouri, southeastern Iowa, western Illinois, southern Indiana, west Michigan western Kentucky, Louisiana, and western Tennessee. Alligator snapping turtle often utilize core sites, characterized by specific microhabitat features such as an abundance of structural cover such as cut banks, root balls, and submerged trees and dense canopy cover.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
In general, it will eat almost anything it can catch. Fishermen have glorified the species' ability to catch fish and to deplete fish populations, whereas in fact it largely targets any abundant and easily caught prey, and rarely has any extensive deleterious effect on fish populations.
Its natural diet consists primarily of fish and fish carcasses, mollusks, carrion, and amphibians, but it is also known to eat snakes, snails, worms and other invertebrates, crayfish, insects, water birds, aquatic plants, other turtles and sometimes even small alligators. About two months later, the female builds a nest and lays a clutch of 10–50 eggs.
In crisis
The IUCN lists it as an endangered species, and as of 23 February 2023, it was listed as a CITES Appendix II species, meaning international trade (among them in parts and derivatives) is regulated by the CITES permit system. The alligator snapping turtle is now endangered in several states, among them Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri, where it is protected by state law. In June 2024, it was announced captive alligator snapping turtles, bred in Oklahoma, would be reintroduced to the Neosho River in Kansas in hopes of bringing them back to its waterways.
Alligator snapping turtle is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Alligator snapping turtle, Wikidata item Q457872. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
