Red-eared Slider

About the Red-eared Slider

The turtle stacked three deep on every basking log in Texas, named for the red slash behind each eye. Red-eared Sliders are natives here, though the pet trade has carried them to every continent but Antarctica, making them one of the most widespread reptiles on earth - and, outside their home range, one of the most invasive.

They slide off their log at the first hint of trouble - hence the name - and haul back out minutes later, because basking is serious business: the sun drives their metabolism, hardens the shell, and bakes off algae and leeches. On a warm winter afternoon they will bask even in January.

Diet shifts with age. Young sliders are mostly carnivorous, taking insects, tadpoles, and small fish; adults graze increasingly on aquatic plants, with carrion cleanup duty throughout. In turn, eggs and hatchlings feed herons, raccoons, and big fish - a pond's slider population is a working part of its food web.

Females leave the water in late spring to dig nests in sunny soil, sometimes far from the pond, and the temperature of the nest decides the hatchlings' sex - warmer clutches produce females, cooler ones males.