Mating takes place throughout the season of activity but is most
common in spring--soon after emergence from hibernation--and in
autumn. Turtles frequently copulated in the laboratory in spring and
autumn. Copulation was observed under natural conditions on several
occasions but only once at the Damm Farm.
Norris and Zwiefel (1950:4) saw two captive individuals of _T. o.
luteola_ copulating on 12 August; copulation lasted two hours.
Brumwell (1940:391-2) gave the following description of mating in _T.
o. ornata_. A male pursued a female for nearly half an hour, first
nudging the margins of her shell and later approaching her rapidly
from the rear and hurling himself on her back in an attempt to mount,
at the same time emitting a stream of liquid from each nostril. The
liquid was presumably water; both sexes had imbibed water in a pond
just before courtship began. Brumwell suggested that pressure on the
plastron of the male had forced the water out his nostrils. The pair
remained in the coital position for 30 minutes after the male had
achieved intromission. In another instance, Brumwell (_loc. cit._) saw
four males pursuing a single female, the males exhibiting the same
behavior (nudging and lunging) outlined above. Males that attempted to
mount other males were repelled by defensive snapping of the
approached male. The female also snapped at some of the males that
tried to mount her. One male was finally successful in mounting and
was henceforth unmolested by the other males. Brumwell suggested that
shell biting and tapping may be methods of sex-recognition.
In the several instances of mating that I observed, the male, after
mounting the shell of the female (Pl. 28), gripped her, with the first
claws of his hind feet, just beneath her legs or on the skin of the
gluteal region and, with the remaining three claws, gripped the
posterior edges of her plastron. In most instances the female secured
the male's legs by hooking her own legs around them. The coital
position of _T. ornata_ seems to differ from that of _T. carolina_, at
least in regard to the position of the male's legs. The coital
positions of _T. carolina_ illustrated by Cahn (1937:94, Fig. 13) are
physically impossible for _T. ornata_.
In _T. ornata_ the pressure exerted on the male's legs by the female
probably impairs circulation and probably is painful to the male,
especially after coitus, when the male falls backward but is still
held by the female. The heavily developed musculature of the legs of
males may be an adaptation to strengthen the legs for this temporary
period of stress. Evans (1953:191) and Cahn and Conder (1932:87-88)
observed the hind legs of males of _T. carolina_ to be noticeably
weakened after copulation, causing the males to remain inactive for
several hours.
Evans (_op. cit._) observed 72 matings of _T. carolina_ and divided
the process into three phases as follows: 1) circling, pushing and
biting by the male; 2) mounting (female with shell closed); and, 3)
coition (female with shell open). Penn and Pottharst (1940:26)
reported that captive _T. carolina_ in New Orleans mated chiefly under
conditions of optimum temperature (21 to 27A deg. C.) and high humidity;
some matings took place in a pool of water. Males pushed females about
after mating, often rolling them over several times.
Because ornate box turtles observed by me were able easily to right
themselves from an inverted position on substrata of all kinds, males
left lying on their backs after copulation are probably in no danger
of perishing in this position, as was suggested by Allard (1939) for
_T. carolina_.