Turtle naming rights

 

Hey there! We've had a few questions from donors about a very specific topic- how much do I have to give in order to get a turtle with my name (or someone else's name) on it?

This is a great question! We do have an ongoing mark-recapture field study in Wisconsin, where we've individually identified hundreds of Blanding's and snapping turtles. We keep track of these turtles by giving them a unique pattern of notches on their shells (you can see these notches on the Blanding's turtle in the photo). Most of our turtles have pretty boring identifiers, like "EB-95". In really exceptional cases where an individual turtle has a lot of "personality", though, a few more descriptive names have just kind of... stuck. This lovely lady, for instance, is Turkey Leg Tina (named after her missing left forelimb). We've been catching Tina on yearly nesting surveys for approximately twenty years now, and losing a leg doesn't seem to have slowed her down a bit.

Most of the turtles on the site are nameless, though, so if you're a project backer at any level and want to give one of our turtles a name, just let us know! We can send you a picture of the turtle to be named if you'd like to see it first. [Note: we provide no guarantee that the turtle itself or its conspecifics will use the name.]