Turtles can be seen sunbathing to regulate their temperature, they are called exotherms or “cold blooded”.

Heartland Forest has a large swamp forest (or slough forest) on its property! This wetland is seasonal with parts drying up in the summer.

Heartland Forest has 4 kinds of maple trees: the black maple, the red maple, the sugar maple, and the freeman’s Maple. The maple genus is called Acer! The sugar maple’s binomial name (scientific name) is Acer saccharum!

Frogs, toads, newts, and Salamanders are amphibians, meaning they have an aquatic gill-breathing larval stage, followed by a terrestrial lung-breathing adult stage, but some amphibians stay in an aquatic habitat and keep their gills as an adult such as the Axolotl!