There Is No Place Like Home – Turtle Homing Instincts

Updated July 2025

Seeing a turtle out in the wild or even in your backyard is an exciting event. Turtles are easy to observe due to their slow-moving nature. They also tend to hang out in areas where people are also hanging out.

This article will specifically look at the Homing Instinct and Site fidelity of the Eastern Box Turtle. Removing any of them from their territory can cause confusion and even death. References and studies are listed at the end of the article and in text citations given.

Turtle in my wildlife rehabilitation program.

What scientists mean by “home”

In wildlife biology, “home” usually means a home range: the area an animal routinely uses for feeding, resting, nesting, and overwintering. We may also refer to this as its territory.

In a classic long-term study (Stickel) from Maryland, Lucille Stickel tracked eastern box turtles for decades and found that individuals used modest, fairly stable home ranges, often revisiting the same micro-sites year after year (including familiar overwintering spots). Stickel was a fascinating woman and you can read more about her here.

Site Fidelity

Eastern Box turtles demonstrate high site fidelity, and it’s a hallmark of this species.

Site fidelity refers to the likelihood of an animal to return to a previous location or birthplace. This behavior can offer advantages like access to resources, shelter, or familiar breeding grounds. However, strong site fidelity can be a challenge when habitats change due to human activity or other factors.

In 2023 in a joint study (Erb), regional scientists put together the Status Assessment for the Eastern Box Turtle in the Northeastern United States. They found that eastern box turtles show strong fidelity to home ranges, with some year-to-year shifting but frequent reuse of the same areas, including repeated use of the same brumation (winter) sites.

Turtles seldom travel farther than 1.5 miles from their birthplace. It lives out its life, often 50 - 75 years, in the area it was born. (Erb & Cook)

According to the above study, reported straight-line “range lengths” (think: the longest dimension of the space a turtle uses) can vary widely—from as little as ~40 meters up to a couple of kilometers—depending on the landscape and individual. But across those settings, the pattern of returning to known places is consistent.

Interested in becoming a wildlife rehabilitator? Check out my book for all the necessary information!

Habitat Change

You can imagine how a turtles territory may have changed over the years. Sometimes this is confusing to the turtle. They do not understand road construction and sports cars. But they continue to travel around that territory – they do not abandon ship.

Field studies spanning a half-century or more have found specific box turtles are still living in the same place. Studies show that they use the same places to nest, hibernate, find water and food.

Check out our video, staring Smash, on Turtle Homing Insticts

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Turtle Homing Instinct

When removed from their territory turtles will try to find their way home. Studies (Sickel and Hays) have shown that when the turtle is moved more than a mile from their home territory that they become confused and often cannot find their way home.

Radio-tracking studies give us a real-world picture of homing. When researchers relocate wild eastern box turtles away from their home ranges, the turtles often respond by wandering more and by attempting to return—behaviors that expand their movements and can increase risk.

In a study from North Carolina that compared “resident” turtles to relocated ones, the relocated group had home ranges three to seven times larger (depending on how range size was calculated), moved farther per day, and suffered more mortality or disappearance during the tracking period. The authors explicitly questioned relocation as a management strategy for the species. (Hester)

Turtles are determined creatures and will continually try to find their way back home. Unfortunately, the stress of being in unfamiliar territory will cause them to stop eating. Moving them far from home can backfire. The North Carolina study mentioned earlier found that relocated turtles roamed more widely and had worse outcomes than residents. That extra movement isn’t aimless; it often looks like searching for home, but broader wandering puts turtles in harm’s way, from roads to predators to heat stress. (Hester)

One study done on Eastern Box Turtles found that only 47% of translocated turtles survived and established a new home range.

How do they do it? The turtle toolkit for navigation

No single “magic sense” explains box turtle homing; it’s likely a multi-cue process that changes with context. Here’s what the evidence suggests:

• Sun compass: Under clear skies, many turtles can use the sun’s position, compensated by their internal circadian clock, to maintain a heading. The 1957 (Gould) box turtle work is part of a broader literature showing sun-compass use across freshwater and terrestrial turtles.

• Magnetic compass (magnetoreception): The 1988 (Mathis) eastern box turtle experiments demonstrated that disturbing the magnetic field can disrupt orientation. Similar magnet experiments in sea turtles (hatchlings and juveniles) also disrupt normal bearings, bolstering the general principle that turtles can use Earth’s magnetic field as a compass. While sea turtles migrate vast distances and box turtles do not, the shared sensory mechanism is notable.

• Landmarks & memory: Long-lived animals with high site fidelity are excellent spatial learners. Once box turtles know a landscape, they can likely return using stored “cognitive maps” of landmarks, edges, and resource locations. Long-term telemetry shows they revisit the same overwintering, nesting, and foraging spots—behavior consistent with strong spatial memory. (Stickel, 1988)

• Other cues (context-dependent): In some turtles, researchers have proposed roles for olfactory gradients (smells), slope and topography, and even humidity patterns. For eastern box turtles specifically, direct experimental evidence beyond sun and magnet cues is thinner, but the broader turtle literature supports the idea that multiple senses are integrated. (Mathis)

Territory and Mating

You may wonder why box turtles have such a small range. Well, one reason is obvious. They are slow-moving animals who can not jump, climb or fly. Another important reason is that turtles depend on their vision to find a mate.

Many species use sound (birds) or smell (mammals) to find a pretty girl. The Eastern Box Turtle must be close enough to see his potential mate. In a smaller territory with several other turtles, this is more likely.

Several species of turtles exhibit nest site fidelity. This means they return to the same place every year to lay their eggs.

Picking Up Turtles Put ‘Em In Your Pocket – NOT!

I loved that old children’s song “Pickin up pawpaws put em in your pocket” when I was a child and would sing it to myself as I walked through the fields of our farm putting whatever struck my fancy in my pockets. Usually, it was rocks and field flowers, but my mother said she shook out my clothes with great caution as sometimes it included bugs or a toad.

It is a common occurrence for people to remove turtles from their environment and take them home. Sometimes they feel they are “helping”. Sometimes they may feel the wild turtle will make a good and cheap pet.

Don’t relocate healthy turtles far from where you found them. Help them across the road if they’re in danger, but keep them in the same area. Their homing instinct will likely drive them to search for familiar ground, which increases risk.

As humans, we naturally think we know what is best for the animal. But that is not always true. Seriously, would you want to go from being free to being entertainment and living in a 10 gallon (or smaller) tank? Furthermore, turtles are not “easy” pets. They have very specific temperature, light and humidity needs.

Turtle populations are in decline. They have relatively few young and often have delayed sexual maturity. When turtles are taken out of the wild they are not able to reproduce which adds to the population decline.

One study found that a minimum density of 12 box turtles per acre was necessary to maintain a viable population. Many areas of the country have populations far below that.

Read my article Kentucky Turtles: Slowly Walking Towards Extinction to learn more about turtle populations.

What To Do If You Find A Turtle

Crossing The Road

If you find a box turtle crossing the road pull over when you can do so safely. Use caution and look both ways before going on to the road. Carry the turtle to the other side of the road and place them in the direction they were going. Wish the turtle well, wash your hands and continue on your way.

Snapping turtles should be approached with caution. They have a long neck and can reach around and bite you. NEVER pick up a turtle by the tail. You can damage their spine.

Pick up the turtle by the back of its shell.

This is a great video on safely moving a snapping turtle.

How To Help A Snapping Turtle Cross The Road

Injured Turtles

If you come across a turtle that has been hit by a car. First, make a note of the location. Next contact your nearest rehabber. In many states, it is illegal to take the turtle home.

You can go to Animal Help Now to find a local rehabilitator. 

Place the turtle in a cardboard box and place it in a quiet location until you can transport it to a rehabilitator.

Turtles are actually very resilient animals and can heal with proper medical treatment and rehabilitation.

If a turtle needs rehabilitation, release near the capture site whenever possible. Releasing a recovered turtle back into its original home range gives it the best chance to re-establish normal movements and seasonal routines. (Wildlife rehabilitators and agencies increasingly take this approach because of the strong evidence for site fidelity.) (Erb)

The big picture

From a conservation perspective, the eastern box turtle’s homing instinct is both a marvel and a challenge. It’s marvelous because it reveals a sophisticated blend of senses and memory in an animal many of us meet at ankle height; it’s challenging because it means “well-meant moves” can do more harm than good.

If you’re a gardener or land steward, you can support homing and site fidelity by making your property turtle-friendly: keep some leaf litter, retain brushy edges, protect small wet patches, and mow a little less, a little later. Given a stable neighborhood of microhabitats—and the sun and Earth itself as guides—eastern box turtles will do the rest.

References:

1. Cook, Robert P. 2015 Dispersal, home range establishment, survival, and reproduction of translocated eastern box turtles, Terrapene c. carolina. APPLIED HERPETOLOGY1:197-228 http://nsmn1.uh.edu/dgraur/popbio/Applied%20Herpetology%20article%20Box%20Turtle.pdf

2. Erb, L.A. and H.P. Roberts. 2023. Status assessment for the eastern box turtle in the northeastern United States. Final report to the Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (NEAFWA) for a Regional Conservation Needs (RCN) award. https://www.northeastturtles.org/uploads/3/0/4/3/30433006/teca_status_assessment_030623.pdf

3. Gould, E. ORIENTATION IN BOX TURTLES, TERRAPENE c. CAROLINA (LINNAEUS) The Biological Bulletin 1957 112:3, 336-348 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.2307/1539126

4. Hays, Elizabeth D. Ethan J. Royal, Ethan C. Hollender, and John D. Willson "Evaluating translocation strategies for box turtles in urbanising landscapes," Wildlife Research 51(4), (16 April 2024). https://doi.org/10.1071/WR23100

5. Hester, Joy, Price Steven J, and Michael E. Dorcas "Effects of Relocation on Movements and Home Ranges of Eastern Box Turtles," Journal of Wildlife Management 72(3), 772-777, (1 April 2008). https://doi.org/10.2193/2007-049

6. Mathis, Alicia & Moore, Frank. (2010). Geomagnetism and the Homeward Orientation of the Box Turtle, Terrapene Carolina. Ethology. 78. 265 - 274. 10.1111/j.1439-0310.1988.tb00238.x.

7. Stickel, L. F. (1989). Home Range Behavior among Box Turtles (Terrapene c. carolina) of a Bottomland Forest in Maryland. Journal of Herpetology, 23(1), 40–44. https://doi.org/10.2307/1564314



Author, Ame Vanorio, has 15+ years in wildlife rehabilitation, is a former science teacher and an environmental educator as well as author. She is the director of Fox Run Environmental Education Center and a licensed wildlife rehabilitator.