Two albino Blanding’s Turtle (Emydoidea blandingii) hatchlings from Ontario

Abstract

Albinism in turtles is rare but has been reported in more than a dozen species. We observed two albino Blanding’s Turtle
(Emydoidea blandingii) hatchlings from one nest collected and incubated as part of a turtle conservation program in eastern Ontario. The albino hatchlings were the same size (3.4 cm straight-line carapace length) as the other two hatchlings from the nest and only slightly smaller than the average length of Blanding’s Turtles (3.6 cm) produced from our nests in 2025. Only one of 132 (0.76%) successfully incubated Blanding’s Turtle nests over the past eight years has produced albinos. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first documented case of albinism in Blanding’s Turtles.