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yellow belly sliders

22 16:14:55

Question
can yellow belly sliders survive after being in captivity?

Answer
Turtles are slow to learn new territory- where to hide, where the good food is, where to hibernate, etc. In general, the longer they have been in captivity, the longer this takes. We recommend not releasing turtles that have been in captivity for more than about 8 months, and never releasing captive-bred or store-bought turtles.

Now- the other side of the coin is that sometimes they DO survive. This is actually bad news. Sliders are 'survivors' and tend to take over new places. You can find ponds full of Sliders around the world where people have released them and they have lived.

The problem is that they almost always hurt native populations of turtles- either by passing on germs the Sliders are resistant to, or by eating the food, or chasing the smaller local turtles away from good hiding or basking sites, etc.

There are hundreds of ponds here in the US where wonderful native species have been eliminated by invading sliders.

So... if this was a recently wild-caught turtle, go ahead and release it as close to home as you can if it is within the 8 month window. If it was store bought or kept for over about 8 months, it would be better to not release it.