Eastern Painted Turtle Survives Despite the Odds: Patient 24-1819

Patient 24-1819, a very unique looking Eastern Painted Turtle, came into the center after being found flipped upside down. After checking the turtle out, the rescuer noticed something was off. He was missing his beak!

What could have caused this?

After thorough examination, the staff here at the wildlife center noticed that there were no signs of scar tissue on this turtle face which hinted at the possibility that there was no injury, which meant research had to be done. We were unsure for some time until we discovered a research paper about “agnathia” in sea turtles. Looking into the images and descriptions of “agnathia”, we knew, we found our match!

You may be thinking to yourself, “what the heck is agnatha?”, and we thought the same thing. While looking into what it was that this turtle had we found that agnathia refers to the absence of some or all of the top and/or bottom jaw. It had been recorded in sea turtles but we were unable to find many cases of this defect in wild animals.

Return to the wild!

While missing parts of the jaw could be problematic with just about any animal, this turtle was seemingly unfazed. While the staff was unsure of his prognosis from the start, when watching this turtle closely he was noted to have been eating regularly and seeming to have any issues with food.

After some time in care while we figured out what to do with this turtle, it was decided that it would be perfectly okay to be released back out into the wild. Patient 24-1819 was safely released back within less than a mile of where he was found! Patient 24-1819 is a reminder to all of us about how resilient wildlife can be!