Older turtles are often covered with a thick coat of algae. A medium sized turtle with a dark green oval shell, marked with yellow in younger turtles, green legs with thin yellow stripes and a green head with a red stripe behind the eye. Females produce up to 3 clutches of eggs each year. Eggs hatch in 60-75 days, or overwinter and hatch in the spring . Some live more than 30 years .
Sliders are cold-blooded and spend much of the day sunning on rocks and logs.
The young turtles are eaten by a variety of predators including birds, raccoons, alligators and large fish. Sliders bury themselves in loose soil or mud during the winter to escape the cold. When population numbers get high, these turtles move across land to other bodies of water in search of food and space. Baby red-eared sliders were once very popular as children s pets until it was discovered that some of them carried the disease, salmonella . It is now illegal to sell sliders less than 4 inches in diameter.