Peninsular Cooter

The peninsula cooter is a freshwater turtle in the genus Pseudemys, native to peninsular Florida, where it lives in rivers, ponds and lakes. It is not a Sri Lankan native. Typical adults have a carapace 23 to 33 cm long and weigh 2.3 to 6.8 kg, though some exceed 40 cm and 15 kg. It is told from the Florida red-bellied cooter by the lack of a reddish plastron and by dozens of yellow stripes on the carapace, limbs, head and tail (Wikipedia, general species account).

Males are smaller than females and have greatly elongated front claws, used to stimulate the female before mating. It is sometimes treated as a subspecies of the coastal plain cooter. No status is given for it in the Sri Lanka National Red List 2012 list checked.