<em>Julie Tougas(1) and Helene Caron (2)</em>

<em>1 Curator of the reptile, amphibian and fish collection, Ecomuseum zoo. 21125 chemin Sainte-Marie, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue (Québec), H9X 3Y7. julie.tougas@ecomuseum.ca</em>

<em>2 Education Program Coordinator, Ecomuseum zoo. 21125 chemin Sainte-Marie, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue (Québec), H9X 3Y7. helene.caron@ecomuseum.ca</em>

The Ecomuseum zoo is a small, CAZA-accredited institution located in Québec, Canada. The zoo is managed by the Saint-Lawrence Valley Natural History Society whose mission focuses on education, research and conservation. Through this three-pronged approach, the Society fosters an appreciation and understanding of the physical and biological characters of the regional flora and fauna. Over the years, the Ecomuseum zoo has developed an extensive onsite and offsite educational program. The zoo’s onsite activities will expose over 20,000 children to the wonderful world of animals. Moreover, the zoo’s zoologist-educators will have the opportunity to influence the lives of over 6,500 children during the 280 offsite presentations scheduled every year. The zoo offers several different offsite presentations, covering general topics such as biodiversity, to more specific topics such as birds of prey or amphibians.

With its living collection of wildlife species serving a dual role as both ambassador and catalyst, the Ecomuseum offers unmatched learning experiences for both children and adults. At the zoo, we have a special appreciation for turtles. Live education turtles have become stellar ambassadors, travelling daily with our educators to offsite events and playing key roles for visitors during our onsite guided tours. Over the course of a one-year period, a turtle is presented during each of our over 900 scheduled onsite guided tours providing visitors with the opportunity to touch a live turtle’s carapace. Our educators will also present live turtles in approximately 60% of offsite presentations.

Several factors combine to make turtles a beneficial addition to any presentation; namely their charismatic appeal, their gentle behaviour and the ease of transport. It should be noted however that the use of live turtles also presents several challenges such as: the public’s awareness that turtles can carry Salmonella sp., housing requirements and animal acquisition. In this paper, we explore and review the advantages and challenges that we have associated with the use of live turtles within our educational program. We will also describe the special care and considerations needed for the care of our education turtles. This article will not be discussing, nor debating, the advantages of live animals within any educational program.

<strong>Why turtles? </strong>

Unlike snakes which carry very negative appeal (Mullin and Seigel, 2009), we believe that turtles benefit from a social charismatic appeal within the general public. Our onsite presentations have supported this hypothesis as these events include interactions with both a snake and a turtle. Numerous occasions of negative responses have been observed in the presence of the snake. This fear is unfortunately reflected by the accompanying children. The presence of the turtle however created both excitation and curiosity in both adults and children. Without fear, curiosity permits participants to remain receptive to learning about the biology and conservation of turtles and of reptiles in general. As a result of the public’s openness to learn, turtles become an ideal taxon to use when educating about biodiversity, evolution and the food chain.

An education turtle, when properly acclimated to its routine, can remain calm when surrounded by a large group of people. This calmness can be interpreted in an anthropomorphic and positive manner by the public; they feel as if the turtle is happy to be held and touched. This interpretation contradicts the common misconception that zoos and aquariums are exploiters of animals (Hutchins et al., 2003). In addition, turtles remain an excellent choice when there is desire to offer the public the chance to touch a live animal. A turtle’s solid carapace and scale-covered limbs (although the head, tail and limbs are not regularly touched) offer excellent protection. The risk of physical trauma related to touching remains therefore low. Furthermore, the turtle’s ability to enter its carapace, as a form of refuge, offers the handler insight related to the turtle’s stress level and he/she can react appropriately by concluding that part of the presentation. Such protective behaviour, if displayed, can also be indicative of post-presentation physical discomfort which may or may not be combined with anorexia (unstressed turtles are always hungry!).

The turtle’s morphology facilitates its transport; its shell and scaled limbs offer a high level of protection from abrasions. Finally, the use of live turtles during presentations can help dispel four widely held misconceptions, namely: that all turtles can hide in their shell, that they can crawl out of their shell (this point can be further explained by the use of a naturalised carapace), that the carapace is indestructible and that turtles are slow!

A special note in regards to the use of indigenous species: The Saint-Lawrence Valley area includes the natural distribution range of eight species of freshwater turtles. Our experiences show that much of the local population is unaware that turtles exist in the area (especially those living in urban centers). The use of indigenous species will therefore promote awareness of our local biodiversity, while also creating an emotional connection when discussing conservation issues. This association and sensitivity is compounded if participants with heightened awareness were to observe a turtle in a wild, yet local, setting.

<strong>Challenges</strong>

The use of live turtles can also present several challenges. One of the biggest and most notable issues relates to the transmission of <em>Salmonella sp</em>. It has been found that turtles may be infected at a rate between 12.1% and 85% (Mader, 2006). It has been shown however that a healthy, un-stressed animal is less likely to shed the bacteria (Gray, 2011). It is recommended that a simple hand sanitization after touching a turtle can prevent infection (Gray, 2011). In consideration of these facts, our turtle interaction sessions are always followed by hand washing or hand sanitization. The participants are informed of the reason behind these practices. The chances of contamination are further reduced by ensuring cleanliness in both the turtle’s temporary and permanent enclosures.

This does however bring forth a second issue that arose: housing. We must ensure that we have enough animals from each species to complete the possible repetition of a presentation in a same day or same time period. This has resulted in the need to keep three to five individuals of each species represented in each presentation topic. There are 27 education turtles housed at the zoo, representing seven species of indigenous freshwater turtles. The genders are kept separately for two essential reasons: first, is to prevent unplanned reproduction, second, and most importantly, is to remove any stresses caused by reproductive behaviour. Males from many species, such as the North American Wood Turtle (<em>Glyptemys insculpta</em>) or the Spotted Turtle (<em>Clemmys guttata</em>), can be very persistent and exhausting to female tank mates, but as well be very territorial and aggressive towards male tank mates. In the case of these species, and most others kept at the zoo, all males must be individually housed, but females may be kept communally. For this reason, and despite the fact that turtle species native to the Saint-Lawrence Valley are relatively small in size, many tanks are required to house all our turtles.

Transportation of the turtles, as mentioned above, can be considered an advantage due to their scales and carapace, but their ectothermic metabolism can cause difficulties when transporting in colder climates. The turtle’s ideal body temperature must be maintained throughout transport in order to maintain an active immune system and to promote a healthy state. We have resolved this issue by constructing insulated transport boxes. Should the need arise, the temperature within these boxes can be increased with the addition of supplemental hot water bottles.

A final challenge, which may or may not be applicable to other institutions, is the acquisition of turtles. Our specimens are acquired through various methods. We offer refuge to rehabilitated and confiscated animals, but our priority is to acquire captive-bred individuals through inter-zoo transfers or through captive hatching within our facility. As a result of careful planning during recent years, we are pleased to state that our captive reproduction program is almost self-sustaining. The captive reproduction of our education turtles permits us to affect the genders (in most species) of our new generation of education turtles, by incubation temperature manipulation. We aim for high female ratio to address the housing challenges mentioned previously. Captive reproduction also permits us to work with individuals at a very young age during our training/desensitisation program (which will be explained later in this article). One disadvantage to captive reproduction vs. acquiring adult animals is that the young turtles need to attain a certain size before they can be transported safely and manipulated daily, in order to prevent damage to their delicate, un-calcified carapace.

<strong>Not all are born to educate!</strong>

Turtles exhibit a variety of behaviours which may or may not make them ideal education turtle candidates. It has been shown that regular handling can physiologically affect turtles (Cabanac and Bernieri, 2000). We want to ensure that our selected education turtles demonstrate positive behavioural tendencies which may reduce any<img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2599" title="turtle" src="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/wp-content/uploads/turtle-300x207.jpg" alt="turtle" width="300" height="207" />negative physiological responses. Some turtles are curious, alert and very stimulated by movement around them, while some turtles exhibit the opposite characteristics. Some can be very shy, scared and can be affected negatively by too much environmental stimuli. The selection of our education turtles is made based on an initial evaluation…

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