Perhaps you have encountered the common box turtle. Like their name implies, they're fairly ubiquitous—found just about anywhere in the continental United States just about anywhere east of Colorado.

There’s a good reason for the box turtle’s name. A hinge on the bottom of its shell lets the land-dwelling turtle pull its legs, head, and tail inside and close it up tight — like a box. When I was a ...

As a budding naturalist growing up in the concrete-heavy environs of Boston, I would regularly thumb through my family’s collection of nature books and daydream about the creatures within. One species ...

In cartoons, when a turtle is spooked, it retreats into and closes up its shell. While used for comic effect, this imagery is based in fact — although not all turtles are capable of this protective ...