My turtle wants to have sex with a piece of plastic
I like turtles. A lot. I like small turtles, and big ones. And I like my pet turtle named max.
I cant even begin to explain how confused I was when I dropped a little plastic toy turtle (about an inch long at most) into his tank one day and did this for me on camera. We learned in class this semester that the behavior being performed by my little turtle max is a fixed action mating behavior that sun turtles (such as my red-eared slider max) do.
So what does this fixed action patter actually accomplish? The turtle is supposed to shake his hands in that manner when he find himself a mating partner.MATING PARTNER?! Please do me a favor and watch the video again, and then tell me that the plastic turtle looks even REMOTELY close to an actual red eared slider. I didnt have a clue how he could think that this little plastic turtle was a living breathing fellow species member.
I thought that this blog entry would be kind of wierd since I am posted about a personal experience of behavior, but I decided that it was such an awesome thing to see the stuff that we are learning about in class actually happening in my home that I would have to share that with everyone. I really still have no clue as to what the sign stimulus for his behavior is, but I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone had any thoughts on what it may be?
I'm guessing that it is the color and shape of the body, even though it is clearly much smaller than an actual turtle would be. In fact, the females of this species of turtle are larger than the male.
Go figure....
Posted by: Abbott (12)
posted by PWH @ 4:11 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I think it is great that you shared a personal experience rather than going and looking up an article because it is different from what everybody else did. I think that it probably was the shape of the body and color just as you stated in your article. It would be interesting to experiment with it and see what sets it off by just revealing a head or a color object and find the source. One thing I think you can do to make your article better would be to look up a little research about the type of turtle and add that to your post perhaps you may learn what triggers their fixed action pattern and we would learn more about the turtle and its behavior. You definitely were creative here though and I give you your props.
CMB (12)
I really enjoyed your article because you used your own animal behavior rather than reading about one from an article. I thought this was very interesting. There were a few grammatical errors so you may want to read over your article, but all in all it was great!
(ALC 12)
I really enjoyed your article because you used your own animal behavior rather than reading about one from an article. I thought this was very interesting. There were a few grammatical errors so you may want to read over your article, but all in all it was great!
(ALC 12)
Hey thats really interesting. I think its cool how you have a video for everyone to watch as well. Thats really weird how the turtle does that when the female is larger than the male in this species and when it does not resemble an adult turtle. Mabe it has something to do with the turtles eyesight in the water. He might thing that the target female is a little farther away from him than it really is. In that case that would explain how his behavior would be performed in such a way as to get her attention. Also, being in this tank for his whole life without interaction with other turtles may have caused him to be a little less sharp than he would be in the wild. The colors on the plastic turtle are also a good idea for the reason for his behavior.
AMG
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