Red-eared slider

Baby sliders eat little animals, like bugs, snails and tadpoles.

Grown-up sliders eat mostly plants. They eat in the water and on land.

What a slider eats depends on its age. Young sliders are mostly meat-eaters: they gobble insects, spiders, crayfish, tadpoles, small fish and snails, because they need lots of nutrients to grow.

As they grow up, sliders become omnivores that eat mostly plants: water plants, algae, leaves, flowers and seeds, plus small animals when they can catch them. They hunt and graze both in the water and on land.

Diet shifts with age (an ontogenetic shift). Juveniles are mostly carnivorous, taking insects, larvae, spiders, crayfish, tadpoles, fish, clams, snails and other small animals, apparently because they cannot extract enough nutrients from plants. Adults become omnivores with a large plant component: aquatic and land plants, algae, flowers and seeds, along with freshwater invertebrates.

In a southern Illinois study cited by ADW, adult stomachs held more than 40 percent plant material; females ate more mollusks than males, especially while nesting. The USGS notes that sliders also eat frog eggs, tadpoles and even water snakes.

Sliders love to sunbathe.

They climb onto logs and rocks to warm up. Lots of sliders sit together, and they do not fight over space.

Red-eared sliders spend a lot of time basking: climbing onto logs, rocks and banks to soak up the sun. Sliders rely on the sun to keep warm, and warming up speeds up their bodies and helps them digest food.

Sliders are social and are often found in large numbers in the same place. They are not territorial and do not defend a patch of pond. They are most active in warm months, but on sunny winter days they may still come out to bask.

Basking is central to slider life. Sliders bask on logs, rocks, banks and floating debris, keeping body temperatures between about 18.2 and 33.6 degrees Celsius; warming raises metabolic rate and aids digestion. They do not bury themselves for warmth, relying on basking instead, and are active on sunny days even in cold months.

They are gregarious and not territorial. Communication involves visual displays, eye movements, vibrations and touch. During courtship a male performs 'titillation', vibrating his long foreclaws in the water near the female's face. Predators include snakes, alligators, wading birds, crows, large fish, opossums, skunks and raccoons.

Red-eared sliders are popular pets.

Pet turtles should never be let go outside. In some places, sliders that were let go cause trouble for the turtles that belong there.

In their home range, red-eared sliders are common. Their biggest story is about pets. Between 1989 and 1997, more than 52 million were shipped from the United States to other countries, and many pets were later released into ponds and rivers. Releases peaked during a cartoon craze for turtles in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Released sliders can cause problems for native turtles. The European Union banned bringing them in because released pets harm Europe's native pond turtles. If you have a pet turtle, it should never be let go outdoors; ask a vet or a reptile rescue for help instead.

The IUCN lists the pond slider as a species as Least Concern (assessed 2010, flagged as needing an update) with a stable population; threats it names include roads and harvesting, and the species is traded for pets and food. The Global Invasive Species Database reports more than 52 million red-eared sliders exported from the United States between 1989 and 1997, and calls for education on the dangers of releasing pet turtles.

The USGS traces introductions mainly to pet releases and escapes since the 1930s, peaking during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The European Union banned imports because of the negative impact released pets can have on native European pond turtles. In the United States, the sale of turtles under 4 inches long was banned in 1975 to prevent the spread of salmonella illness in children.