Turles, just like many other animals and reptiles, will exhibit a variety of different movements as part of their normal behavior.
If you notice that your pet is behaving in a way that you don’t expect, if your turtle is kicking its legs while basking, then you’d understandably be confused.
This article looks into why your turtle is kicking its legs while basking.
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Turtle kicking legs while basking:
If your pet turtle kicks its legs once or twice then you likely won’t worry, but, if your pet starts to kick its legs excessively then you may start to worry and wonder why that is.
Closely monitoring your pet turtle is recommended for all turtle raisers.
Keeping an eye on these animals will help you quickly pick up if the animal starts acting off and this will allow you to quickly diagnose your pet.
Here is why your turtle may be kicking its legs while basking:
Thermoregulation:
One reason why a turtle may kick its legs while basking may be because it is trying to keep itself warm.
Turtles have a way of keeping themselves warm by basking, they need to do this because they can’t keep themselves warm internally.
While heat does penetrate the animal’s shell, having more skin exposed is better.
The animals will stretch out to allow light rays to hit their skin. The kicking of the legs is one way that the animals stretch to expose more of their skin to the light from their basking lamp in order to get more exposure to heat.
What to do:
This is quite normal behavior and isn’t something that you would need to worry about, in fact, there really isn’t anything you can do about it.
The animals will stretch as far as they can, kicking their legs back to get light, but you as a human can’t help them get more UV light.
Itching or discomfort:
Another reason why your turtle may be kicking its legs while basking may be because the animal feels itchy, irritated, or feels discomfort of some kind.
This can happen for a variety of reasons, your pet may have old skin on its legs and this may be irritating to them or itchy.
The turtle may kick its legs because it doesn’t yet realize that it can scratch its legs up against something to satisfy the itch.
If your pet has a skin irritation caused by a scratch or a parasite then the animal may also kick its legs as a way of relieving itself of this irritation.
What to do:
This is normal and harmless behavior, as long as your pet doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of distress or illness along with this behavior then your pet should be fine.
If your pet does start to show signs of distress or illness then a vet visit wouldn’t hurt.
What you should not do is try to help your pet’s skin peel off while it is shedding, doing this can injure your pet and make the turtle scared of you
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other turtle/tortoise related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Red-Eared Slider Scratching Head, Why Is My Turtle Rubbing His Head, Why Is My Turtle Rubbing His Eyes, Why Does My Turtle Twitch While Basking, Why Is My Turtle Spazzing?, Why Is My Tortoise Twitching?, Why Is One Turtle Bigger Than The Other?, Why Is My Turtle Jumping, Tortoise Head Twitching