21 SEPTEMBER 2018

Pi Ears

Pi is quite the pampered turtle and is often relaxed while on her basking platform. Sometimes Pi gets too comfortable while basking that she lets her guard down. As a result, whenever Pi encounters sudden movements or sounds, she can get startled and may slide off of the platform and land into the water frantically.

The Pi Cam caught a couple of instances where Pi got surprised and slid off of the platform. As you can see in the video below, Pi is extremely fast at sliding off her platform when she gets scared. I stitched together 3 clips, and after each clip, I repeated the same clip but slowed the speed down by 50% so that I can observe her sliding in detail. Even at a slower speed, she still appears to slide very quickly!

Sometimes Pi decides to slide off of the platform slowly. The video below shows a rare example where Pi hangs out on the edge of the platform for a bit before she dives into the water. Maybe she is trying to take a drink of water, but did not want to get wet? There is a couple of inches gap between the platform and water, so perhaps she is trying to stretch herself as much as she can to reach the water.

As you may realize by now, red-eared slider turtles got their common name partly by their ability to quickly slide off of basking areas and into the water, and of course, from the red stripe around their ears.