- [Coyote] The turtle's right here!
Ooh, he's burying down, hold on, hold on!
No, no, no, no!
(dramatic music)
You can literally walk for miles across
the desert and never come across a single drop of water.
So it's safe to say that the last place you would
think to look for aquatic turtles
is in the middle of this parched ecosystem.
I can smell water!
Can you smell that?
- [Mark] Oh yeah.
It's like the air just cooled off.
- Wow, feels great down here.
Alright, let's move up slow just in case there's any animal
like right here.
Sometimes it happens.
You approach a body of water and all of a sudden "boom!"
An animal jumps in.
Wow.
It is crystal clear.
Not gonna be hard to find animals in this.
Alright, let's get into it.
Today, I will be exploring the flowing waters of the
Santa Cruz River, which runs like a life giving vein
through Arizona's Sonoran Desert.
This water system is home to many different animals, but
the one creature I am specifically searching for today
is a reptile known as the spiny softshell turtle.
Wow, this is a pretty cool environment.
I've never been in the water before in the desert.
Look at this!
It is just globs of algae and sand.
It's like this magical mix of desert and swampland.
This is super cool!
Alright, well let's head this way up river.
You can see that the water is fairly shallow.
It's also crystal clear, which means if we see any
animals, we should be able to catch 'em.
Now, when I'm looking for turtles in Ohio, I'm used to
looking at a mound in the mud and saying "Oh!
That's a carapace buried down."
Same tactic is gonna be used here, because this time
a day, spiny softshells are burrowing in the shallow
sand and just sticking their noses up out of the water
so that they can breathe.
Many different creatures we can come across out here.
You guys ready?
- [Mark] Alright, let's do it.
- Mario, you good?
Alright, let's keep moving.
We have tried for many years to get the
spiny softshell turtle in front of the cameras, with
unfortunately, no success.
However, I have a good feeling that today might be our
lucky day.
(airy, pleasant music)
Whoa.
These trees are like...
Covered in cotton.
It's like I'm walking through an entire world of spiders
right now.
All these webs.
Wow, there are spiders all over the trees.
Let me see if you guys can see this.
Look at that.
Covered in spiders.
I know this would probably be somebody's worst nightmare.
If you had arachnophobia, this is not where you would
wanna be.
(intense music)
Turtle!
- [Mark] What kind?
- Softshell!
Aww, man, it was booking, though!
Ow!
- [Mark] You okay?
- He nailed my knee.
Wow, it was fast, just caught out of the corner of my eye.
Missed it, though.
Not big, only about that big.
- [Mark] So they are in the water.
- 100 percent a softshell, though.
Man, he was just jetting right down the middle of that.
Okay, that's a good sign, though.
This is the sort of area there they would be laying out
in the bankments.
Keep your eyes peeled.
These turtles are hard to catch.
But at least having seen one proves that they live in
this river.
So we headed further into the wild, searching for slower
moving water.
A lot of times, they'll bury up underneath an embankment
like this.
And that's what I'm looking for.
There's a turtle right here!
Ooh, he's burying down, hold on, hold on!
I can get him!
Got him!
- [Mark] Nice!
- Whoa!
They are so unbelievably slippery!
I went to the net for a second, I was like "Maybe we should
get him with the net."
Feel how slippery this turtle is!
He started burying down underneath the sand.
Yes, there it is!
That is a spiny softshell!
- [Mark] That's our turtle!
- Whoo!
That is exactly what I hoped to find.
What about that timing?
I mean literally, as I'm saying
"Yeah, right up underneath these embankments
sometimes you'll see them burying down."
I just kind of slightly looked up and saw movement out of
the corner of my eye and his shell was literally burying
down into the sand.
- [Mark] Great grab.
- Alright, well let's get it, um...
- Let's go over here where I can get my big camera out.
- Okay.
Yes!
Hah!
Cannot believe we got one!
Hah!
There it is!
That is the spiny softshell turtle.
You guys have no idea how long I've been trying to get
one of these turtles up close for the cameras.
We tried to do this episode before in Ohio and they have
alluded me on every single expedition.
And then of course the episode doesn't end up getting
released.
And sure enough, it's here in a river system in the Sonoran
Desert that we finally manage to catch one.
Now let's take a good look at the structure of this
turtle's body.
I'm gonna very carefully tilt it up like this, Mark.
- [Mark] Whoa.
- And take a look at that carapace
- [Mark] That is something else.
- Right?
It's very streamlined.
Extremely smooth.
You'll notice that it doesn't have typical scutes like
most turtle species.
Go ahead, put your hand out there and touch the shell of
that turtle and tell me what it feels like.
- [Mark] Oh, wow.
That feels just like leather.
- Exactly, right?
And it's very pliable.
That's what allows these turtles to quickly bury down
in the sand and hide up underneath embankments.
On top of that, the streamlined body structure allows him to
move very, very quickly underwater.
I love the feet!
Look at those feet!
It's like a mix between a foot and a fin.
These turtles are perfectly aquatic and very rarely
do you see them on land.
Only out ever to bask and warm up.
As we know, they are ectotherms, which means that
they need the sun to heat up their bodies.
Oh, I see, you looking at my hat there.
Don't you bite my nose.
Now, I do not want to take a bite from one of these turtles.
They have extremely sharp beaks, razor sharp
in fact, and they use that beak to catch and
kill their food.
What they're looking for out here are small fish, frogs,
crayfish, anything that this turtle comes across
and can turn into a meal, it's fair game.
They are opportunistic predators.
Ow, ow, ow, I am getting clawed up here.
Here, let me put him down in the water for a second.
Watch this.
I'm gonna hold onto the shell really tight, let's see
if you can see those feet in action.
There we go, look at that.
- [Mark] Oh yeah.
- [Coyote] Can you see that?
- [Mark] So this is a very aquatic turtle.
- Yes.
And they are very, very slippery.
Look at that.
You see its feet going?
And look at that, you see the head sticking up above
the water there?
They have extremely long necks and that's what allows them
to stay buried down in the sand.
And all they have to do is extend that little piggie
looking nose up through the water, through the sand,
just like that, and they can breathe without even
being noticed.
That's another reason why they are so incredibly hard to
to find.
Oh, this is kinda cool.
Can you see these little spines?
On the back of the shell there?
- [Mark] Yeah, I can, they're like little nodules.
- [Coyote] That is where they get the name
spiny softshell turtle from.
Okay, let's look at the underside of the turtle.
The plastron.
- [Mark] Extremely white.
- Very white, very very smooth.
Also helps in allowing these turtles to move quickly
across the sandy basin of this river.
Whoa, he's so cool!
Alright, let's do this.
I'm going to set him down gently here and look at the
camouflage of this turtle against the sand.
Can you see that?
Now, notice the coloration in the turtle's skin.
It's very light, just like the sand, and all these
little dark markings help it blend in--
Ooh, he tried to bite me.
Blend in perfectly to the granules of sand that are on
the basin of the river.
Look at that, look at his head just up above the water
there and boop, just like that it goes down and then the
turtle can quickly make a run for it.
I gotcha, come here, we're gonna hang out just a little bit
longer.
Wow!
This is gotta be the coolest feeling turtle I have ever
held.
It is so slimy.
Whoa, he's so cool!
I can't believe we caught one!
He's clawing up my hand pretty good, too.
Well how cool was this?
Finally catching a spiny softshell turtle and of all places,
here in the Sonoran Desert.
I'm Coyote Peterson, be brave!
Stay wild.
We'll see you on the next adventure.
Alright, let's get him back into the river.
Watch how fast he takes off.
(dramatic music)
Exploring the Santa Cruz River was an adventure unlike
any we have embarked upon in the Sonoran Desert and was
truly one for the memory books.
The spiny softshell is technically a nonnative reptile
to the Sonoran Desert.
However, over the past quarter century, they have
established a strong breeding population and are not
considered by most to be a permanent resident.
This is definitely one creature that everyone out there
watching has been asking to see, so I'm glad we could
finally get the Coyote Pack up close with
the spiny softshell turtle.
If you thought the spiny softshell was a unique looking
turtle, make sure to go back and watch the episode
where I got face to face with the enormous
Galapagos tortoise.
And don't forget, subscribe!
So you can join me and the crew on this season
of Dragon Tails.