Ornate box turtles are solitary except during periods of mating.
Meetings with other individuals in the course of foraging, basking, or
seeking shelter, are fortuitous and have no social significance. A
broad overlapping of home ranges of both sexes at the Damm Farm
suggests that box turtles do not intimidate other individuals in the
home range or exclude them from it. No instances of fighting were
observed.
Allard (1935:336), Perm and Pottharst (1940:26), and Latham (1917)
recorded instances of fights between individuals of _T. carolina_; in
the latter two instances fights were between males. Stickel (1950:362)
observed an incident between two males that may have been a fight;
however, she was of the opinion that fights rarely occur in nature and
that box turtles do not defend territories. Evans (1954:23-25)
considered the behavior of _T. carolina_ reported by Perm and
Pottharst (_loc. cit._) to represent "territoriality." He found "... a
true hierarchy...." existing between four captive males of _T.
carolina_ and another between three captive females of the same
species; young individuals in the group raised their social level in
the hierarchy after receiving experimental doses of male hormone.
Evans (_op. cit._:25) pointed out that true tortoises (family
Testudinidae) have a more complex pattern of social behavior than do
emyid turtles.
Observations made with binoculars from the vantage point of a blind
provide the only information that I have concerning the reactions of
box turtles to one another under natural conditions. Turtles foraging
in a bare area were not startled by the approach of other turtles, and
turtles moving across the area seemed to take no notice of turtles
already there, regardless of whether these turtles were moving or not.
Adults and subadults behaved in approximately the same manner.
Individuals traveling or foraging in rough terrain or in grassy areas
probably are unable to see each other even when they are close to one
another. Conversely, box turtles can see each other and are surely
aware of each other's presence in bare, flat areas. These facts
suggest that no social hierarchy exists in _T. ornata_. On one
occasion an adult male and a juvenile (hatched the previous autumn)
were found foraging next to one another on the same pile of cow dung.
When an individual became motionless in an attitude of wariness after
having detected me in my blind, its behavior evoked no response on the
part of other turtles, a few feet away.