Found a weird looking turtle.<\/em><\/p>\n They call him Flat Brim.”<\/em><\/p>\n On Monday, when we were completing our weekly turtle telemetry for our gravid female Blanding’s, I stumbled across an interesting character. What is that? A turtle? Surely not. A USO (unidentified swimming object)? Definitely. A……….. hat?????????!!!!!! Perhaps!<\/p>\n Upon further investigation, it was indeed a sort of hat…. a Flat Brim.<\/p>\n Named for his uncanny resemblance to a flat-brimmed baseball cap, this turtle has been surviving with a deformed shell since at least 2021, which was his last encounter and the first record of his odd shape. He was initially caught and recorded in our database in 2013 as a small juvenile, but no abnormalities were noted at that time.<\/p>\n Despite being a little different, he seems to be doing just fine in the wetland! I had to get creative on my blood drawing technique to adapt to the altered anatomy but was able to secure a solid sample for our analysis.<\/p>\n “Caught only one snap”<\/em><\/p>\n This week, we caught one snapping turtle. This was a disappointment as we were hoping to catch around 20. Based on previous experiences at this field site and the fact that we prioritized large hoop nets, notorious for catching large snapping turtles, we thought we had a good chance at hitting this number. Alas, day after day we checked our traps, only to find one all week. A possible explanation for this is that the one snapping turtle that we did catch ate all of the others. It was the largest one we have ever caught! Getting it out of the net was a fun challenge and Sathvik did a great job sampling it while I kept it safely restrained.<\/p>\n Speaking of being restrained, I think this photo is funny because for some reason Sathvik decided to whip out the classic “I am actively being arrested” pose.<\/p>\n “Sampled twelve painted turtles”<\/em><\/p>\n On the bright side, we did catch many, many painted turtles this week! It was a great opportunity to practice our painted sampling skills.<\/p>\n “Many predated”<\/em><\/p>\n Unfortunately, a very large proportion of the painted turtles we found had predation injuries to their shells or limbs. They were all inactive (or healed) wounds, and the turtles seem to be coping just fine with their injuries, but we can’t help but wonder… what is the source of these mysterious maladies?<\/p>\n “What is wrong, Pine Dunes?<\/em><\/p>\n Why are your turtles so sad?<\/em><\/p>\n Who is chomping them?”<\/em><\/p>\n An expertly written haiku that doesn’t need much explanation. We are always sad when turtles are not at optimum health.<\/p>\n “We will solve the case.<\/em><\/p>\n Saving the world, one by one.<\/em><\/p>\n Turtle by turtle.”<\/em><\/p>\n Finally, the poet reminds us of their mission… to save the world. With our dutifully taken samples and detailed exams, we will do our best to get to the bottom of what is happening at this field site and improve outcomes for any turtles that may be calling it their home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nothing I write in this blog will hold a candle to the saga penned by my Blanding’s compatriot Sathvik last week.\u00a0In an effort to creatively compare, this week’s blog post will be written exclusively in the ancient art form of the haiku. — When turtle tracking, Found a weird looking turtle. They call him Flat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1591,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1591"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6932"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6939,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932\/revisions\/6939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vetmed.illinois.edu\/wel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2026\/07\/image-254x300.jpg\")
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