How Turtles Draw

Art by apes and elephants, with varying degrees of human assistance, has captured the interest of scientists, animal lovers, and the art world. The turtles of Chelonian Connection, an independent laboratory exploring the cognitive abilities of turtles for over thirty years, are the first reptiles to learn to draw. This activity provides a favored behavioral enrichment for the turtles of the lab. The pancake tortoises of the study group first publicly demonstrated the procedure at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s 2008 Reptile and Amphibian Show and have participated in the lecture-demonstrations each subsequent year. Other species creating drawings at the lab include eastern and ornate box turtles and a Russian tortoise.

How do the turtles draw? 

• The human assistant mounts paper on a vertical surface or an easel, and the turtle paddles through the air on the assistant’s hand, pushing with the other feet on available parts of the hand (clarifying the direction of movement) and inclines her head to indicate a marker (usually black or red).
• The turtle steers in the same way toward the paper and touches it with her beak to indicate the starting point for the first line.
• The assistant marks the spot.
• The turtle returns to the starting spot for the first line and each of the following lines and stretches out her neck, drawing her beak across the paper in a straight line or curve.



Eastern box turtle Diode pushes with
considerable pressure against the paper.

• The assistant, keeping the hand steady, watches the direction and shape of each line and reproduces it with the marker. Only if the indicated line is stretching beyond the turtle’s neck reach does the assistant move the supporting hand in the direction the turtle is indicating.

Subjects, among others, include animals, flowers, houses, people, and abstract designs. The figurative drawings are completed with lines in a seemingly random order; rarely does the assistant or viewer guess the subject until the drawing is nearly done, unless the turtle is looking at a model.

Diode and pancake tortoise Willow pose by two of the
pumpkin faces drawn by them and the other chelonians
of the lab, one feature per individual.

Further discussion of the turtles’ art and other accomplishments will be found in forthcoming book Diode’s Experiment: A Box Turtle Investigates the Human World (working title). Diode’s Experiment tells the story of the thirty years of mutual explorations of mind with these socialized turtles. Who could have known that turtles could show such flexible behaviors and creativity?

Chelonian Connection

Hillsboro, Oregon

rosemarydlombard@yahoo.com



PANCAKE TORTOISES AT OMSI and ANGEL REVEALS SECRETS OF MIND

Our Lecture-Demonstration at the OMSI Reptile and Amphibian Show

A pancake tortoise meets one of many visitors. OMSI, 2009
Photo by Sharon Appleman

Saturday, September 3, 2011, we present our fourth annual lecture-demonstration at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s Reptile and Amphibian Show, always on Labor Day Weekend. Other years the show has tallied around 3,000 visitors a day. Our special event is all about the unusual adaptations and accomplishments of the “amazing” East African pancake tortoises in our lab. We (including seven pancake tortoises from the lab) will be in a room near the main exhibit hall between 9:30 and 1:30—Saturday only.
      The computer slide show comes to life when a pancake tortoise meets you, perhaps examining your T-shirt design or jewelry and greets you bolder ones with a turtle-to-turtle greeting: a nose-to-nose push. They will demonstrate their balloon play, mirror play, and procedure in drawing pictures. Some of the better turtle art will be on display.     

      It’s always fun, though tiring, for all of us—the reason we’re limiting our time this year. Come get acquainted while we’re there! There’s more information and a link back to our blog on the OMSI site:  http://www.omsi.edu/reptileshow

Revealing Secrets: Angel Finds a Way

Until I got irritated at reading a whole book at my desktop computer, I was reading a galley version of dolphin researcher Diana Reiss’s forthcoming book, The Dolphin in the Mirror, a very interesting narrative. Her dolphin book, scheduled to appear in stores September 20, is one of a handful for the general reader on long-term studies of captive animals’ cognition that are written by the principal investigator. Thus, like books about Alex the parrot, Koko the gorilla, Kanzi the bonobo, and first signing animal Washoe the chimpanzee, it is a cousin to our Diode’s Experiment. (Funding for behavioral research is tenuous, and a rare study is able to continue for a whole career, so even Diana was not able to study the same dolphins throughout her thirty years of research.) Diana is also featured in the December 2011 issue of Discover magazine.
      Back in the mid eighties, Diana introduced me to her research dolphins (including Circes), John Lilley’s dolphins in adjacent pools, and the set-up for her research, at that time recording and studying dolphin contact calls. Both of us have studied our animals’ vocalizations and mirror self-recognition since the eighties—both with success—but more about the turtles’ sounds and mirror responses another time.
      In her book Reiss notes—and I agree—that if you pay attention to the animals’ interactions, both among themselves and with you, they “often reveal their secrets.” One way they begin this revelation is to show their behavioral flexibility and planning as they try to communicate with a human with whom they’re bonded (and, uh, from whom they want services.) If a lab turtle finds a water dish is, shall we say, “used,” I often see the turtle balanced on the edge of the dish, head bent straight down, staring into the water until I come to change it.

Angel in the Secret Garden

      Here’s a recent example from our lab. Angel, one of Diode’s daughters, found a way to request audio services from the floor. More often, a turtle will steer in hand to the audio equipment or a CD and give it a tap with the beak: the direct approach. This time Angel was walking on the lab floor.

      When I had reorganized books and speakers into a newly-purchased bookcase, I had placed the speakers at either end of the bottom shelf, only three inches above the floor. Angel walked back and forth in front of the long bookcase and stared up at the speaker nearer me each time she passed it, then glanced to my face. After a while I got the idea and put on the next CD.

What Are Chelonians, and What Is This All About?

Chelonians are TURTLES, those reptiles with shells, just with a fancier word. (You can use the same word to refer to turtles, as in our lab name, "Chelonian Connection.")

So welcome to our brand new turtle blog! It will introduce our 30-plus years of surprises working with socialized turtles in the Chelonian Connection cognitive lab, now near Portland, Oregon.

Diode thanks you for coming.



What's going to be in it? Look for photos, stories, background, updates on the Ts' doings and accomplishments, samples from our book-in-progress, Diode's Experiment: A Box Turtle Investigates the Human World, and updates on the book, other publications, and appearances. Look too for information about the species that make up most of our study group: North American box turtles (Terrapena carolina and T. ornata) and the strangely flat and fast African pancake tortoises (Malacochersus tornieri).

These turtles have shown their stuff, including balloon play and animal art, at library and class demonstrations and invited lecture/demonstrations at San Francisco State University, the Oakland Museum, and our popular pancake tortoise showcase featured each year at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). We're on the leading edge of exploring cognition from the behavioral side in these understudied animals. Turtles, it turns out, have more cognitive potential than anybody--including me--would ever have dreamed.

Here's a quick intro to Diode, pictured above and--hardly visible--the dark blob in my hands in our profile picture (taken by Dr. Jane Steig Parsons but squeezed down by me). Diode is an eastern box turtle, called "Grandma" when first seen; She's been with me since 1971. She's the mother of six of the turtles in the group. (How old is she? Probably over 70.)

Diode is the hero of the book and of the blog. In 1979, by her charade showing me she understood classifications of objects, she jump-started the research and set me on a path away from teaching music lit in universities and back to grad school in animal behavior and related fields.

If you'd like a quick catch-up on the turtle project, e-mail me and I'll put you on the list for current issues and the several back issues of the Chelonian Connection Newsletter, which the blog will eventually replace.