What kind of tricks have you taught your box turtle?

Question

I know a girl that used a bell to potty train her dog. After a while the dog rung the bell and told her when he needed to go outside. She is hoping that by ringing a bell in the turtles cage each time she feeds him he will start to associate food with it and ring it himself when he is hungry. Think it will work? It works for dogs and cats always associate noises with food, like can openers. Any pointers on how I can teach my box turtle some decent stuff?

Answer 1

Turtles are hard to train- they do not respond to noises (but do for vibrations), and it is hard to use hunger to reward an animal that can go a month without food.

Most turtles quickly learn that a certain pattern of vibrations plus seeing the same person means they are going to get fed. You can train them to come for food when you open the habitat, or tap on a rock, etc.- but that is not necessarily a good thing. It is not a very natural behavior.

A word to the wise- if you want a small pet to train to do tricks, get a pet rat!

Answer 2

Turtles can't hear. They have tympanic membranes instead of ears, so they can sense vibrations, but not hear sounds, it would be easyer to tap the side of the cage or something that would vibrate it then reinging a bell. Besides that though it might work. My turtles learned that when i held my hand over the tank food was coming, and they would come and splash at the surface till i fead them (they were red eared sliders)

Answer 3

I taught my box turtle to think outside the box. Two days later he disappeared.

Answer 4

For all the luck you'll have, you might as well try to teach it how to fly. Turtles are about as intelligent as a breath mint.

Answer 5

Maybe train him to use a hamster wheel connected to a water wheel and pump water around his aquarium?