- Do you have questions about birds, bugs, bees, butterflies or other wildlife? Send your questions to Wild Things and we will try to find the answers.
Answer to reader question
Kate asks, “I see so many rabbits running across Elm street in Somerville/North Cambridge at night (!!) – and it leads me to wonder, how are these slow, tasty animals not attracting the attention of all of the hawks/eagles/raptors of the commonwealth? How are they not getting gobbled up left and right? They seem to have zero survival instincts, just hippety-hopping around.”
These are very good questions. Our eastern cottontail rabbits do get eaten often. Juvenile rabbits have a very high mortality rate – as many as 95 percent do not survive their first year. Even older rabbits have high mortality rates – from 66 percent to 81 percent per year.
Eastern cottontails compensate for this by having a high reproduction rate, higher even than the native New England cottontail, which they outcompete. (Hunters introduced eastern cottontails to New England in the early 1900s. Now New England cottontails are threatened or endangered.)
The eastern cottontail is sexually mature in only two months, according to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It takes two years for New England cottontails to reach sexual maturity! Eastern cottontails may also have more litters per year.
So it’s easy to see why there are so many of them around: Although they – especially juveniles – get gobbled up by hawks, foxes, coyotes, owls and more, they reproduce quickly.
As for why you see them at night, I think it is because it is light in cities, even at night. Cottontails have good vision in low light but cannot see in complete darkness. So in rural settings, cottontails are most active at dawn and dusk. Cities have streetlights and are much lighter at nighttime, though, so more rabbits venture out later. I have seen many rabbits near my community garden (thankfully outside the garden fence!) at 11 p.m. or later at night.
Red-bellied cooter
Red-bellied cooters (Pseudemys rubriventris) are as unusual as their name. There are not many of them around, and the ones that live in Massachusetts are more than 200 miles from their next closest population in New Jersey. You won’t find them in Cambridge or Somerville either. You’ll have to travel to Plymouth or Bristol counties to find these large, endangered turtles.
Red-bellied cooters are baskets – it increases their body temperature and reduces parasites and infections on their shell or skin. Males and females have brown or black upper shells, while the bottoms of the shells are colorful. Turn some over and the females are red on the bottom, while the males are pink. The coloration darkens as they grow older.
These turtles grow to be about a foot long, although they are only an inch long when they are born. Like most turtles, they have long lives: more than 50 years. One female cooter first captured in 1969 was recaptured in 2015, and estimated to be more than 70 years old. It takes a long time before females are ready to reproduce: 15 to 20 years.
In May or June, females dig a 4-inch-deep hole not far from water and lay 10 to 20 eggs. The eggs incubate in the nest for up to 80 days. Temperature determines the sexes of the offspring. If the nest is warmer, more females are born. If the nest is cooler, more males are born. The young turtles hatch anywhere from late August to October. If the weather is unusually cool, some of the hatchling may overwinter in the nest. If the weather is warmer, the hatchlings head for the water, where they feed on aquatic vegetation. Young turtles also eat crayfish and other marine creatures, but they become more vegetarian as they age.
Red-bellied cooters used to be called Plymouth red-bellied turtles. In 1980, only 300 existed in Massachusetts in a dozen ponds. Beginning in 1984, biologists with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife began efforts to increase their population. They captured wild hatchlings in the fall when they were about the size of a half-dollar or paper clip. In this “head start program,” partners at schools and museums reared the turtles in warm aquatic environments with as much romaine or red leaf lettuce as the hatchlings could eat. These turtles grew much faster than they would have in the wild! Since larger turtles are less vulnerable to predators, it was hoped giving these turtles a head start on growth would lead to better survival rates than those of turtles left in the wild.
In May or June, the turtles, now 4.5 inches long, were released back into ponds and waterways. (In the wild, it would have taken the turtles three years to reach this size.) Since 1984, more than 4,000 turtles have been reared and released. Many of these turtles are now successfully reproducing in the wild.
Before they are released, the turtles are notched and tagged. Through tagging, biologists learned that these larger aquarium-raised turtles have a 95 percent survival rate.
Red-bellied cooters live mostly in ponds and rivers that have plenty of vegetation for the turtles to munch on. The ponds and rivers also must have logs and rocks for the turtles to bask on. Today these turtles live in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and even cranberry bogs in Plymouth and Bristol counties. During the winter, red-bellied cooters hibernate at the bottom of a body of water. Most turtles dig into mud at the bottom of a pond to overwinter, but red-bellied cooters rest on the bottom fully exposed. By overwintering in the water rather than burrowing into the mud, these turtles experience less stress due to lack of oxygen.
The winter of 2015 (the winter of unending snow), was a difficult one for these turtles, and many died. But thanks to scientists who have worked to restore red-bellied cooter populations, these turtles have a better chance of surviving today than they did before. They are still endangered, but their population has become a bit more stable.
Have you taken photos of our urban wild things? Send your images to Cambridge Day, and we may use them as part of a future feature. Include the photographer’s name and the general location where the photo was taken.
Jeanine Farley is an educational writer who has lived in the Boston area for more than 30 years. She enjoys taking photos of our urban wild things.
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