Spiny softshell turtle

Spiny softshells hide in the sand or mud.

When a crayfish comes near, snap! They grab it.

Spiny softshells eat mostly animals, especially crayfish, fish, insects and snails, and sometimes dead animals. They also eat some plants, such as acorns, leaves and fruits.

One way they hunt is by partly burying themselves in sand or mud under the water and snatching prey that comes close. They can also hunt actively, poking their snout into plants or under rocks.

The IUCN describes an omnivorous diet that tends toward carnivory: an Iowa study of 52 stomachs found, by volume, crayfish, large fish, small fish, plant material (including acorns and leaves) and aquatic insect larvae (Williams and Christiansen 1981), and Minnesota stomachs held insects, crayfish, sowbugs, snails, bivalves, earthworms, fish and vegetation (Cochran and McConville 1983). Carrion is taken, and plant eating appears deliberate. Foraging includes ambush with a gape-and-suck strike and active pursuit, thrusting the snout into vegetation or under rocks (Newman 1906). The Ontario government describes turtles partly burying themselves in sand or mud underwater to snatch crayfish and molluscs.

Spiny softshells hardly ever go far from water.

They like sunny places to bask.

Spiny softshells are highly aquatic and rarely travel far from water. They bask in the sun, bury themselves in shallow sand and mud, and spend the winter in deep pools.

Softshells also often swim across the middle of lakes and bays, and because they hide in shallow water near shore, boats coming in to land can hit them.

The Ontario government describes a highly aquatic turtle that rarely travels far from water and whose home range depends on the spread of nesting, hibernation, feeding and basking sites, with some individuals moving up to 30 kilometers in a year; it notes that turtles hiding in shallow mud are at risk from boats coming in to shore, and that softshells often travel across the middle of lakes or bays. In Louisiana, J. S. Doody has regularly seen males foraging in groups of 2 to 10 with males of A. mutica on the bottom of shallow, still water at the ends of sandbars (IUCN).

In most places spiny softshells are doing well.

In Canada they are in danger.

People protect their nesting beaches.

Across most of its range the spiny softshell is common, so it is listed as least concern. But some groups at the edges of its range are shrinking. In Ontario, Canada, it is endangered: only about 1,000 adults were left in 14 populations.

Threats include raccoons and foxes raiding nests, dams, changes to riverbanks, boat strikes and collection for food and the pet trade. In Canada it is protected by law, and in Vermont four nesting beaches have been protected.

Doody, Gillingwater, Mali, Forstner, van Dijk and Rhodin assessed Apalone spinifera as Least Concern for the IUCN Red List (assessed 26 December 2023, published 2024; previously LC in 2011): widespread and generally abundant in its core range and often resilient, even in urban streams, but with sparse and declining northern and disjunct populations; the subspecies A. s. atra remains Critically Endangered. Threats include habitat loss and fragmentation, subsidized nest predators (mainly raccoons), dams and water releases, climate effects on nests, harvest, boat strikes and pollution. 715,499 live animals were declared as exported from the USA between 2000 and 2019, peaking at nearly 130,000 in 2007 and falling below 1,000 a year from 2016.

In Ontario populations declined by up to 45% over 20 years, leaving about 1,000 mature individuals in 14 of 35 known populations (COSEWIC 2016); the species is Endangered under Canada's Species at Risk Act and Ontario's Endangered Species Act. Softshells (Apalone spp.) were listed on CITES Appendix II in 2023, and Minnesota banned harvest in 2022.