1. While the shell of an adult box turtle is seldom fractured, the box turtle is still vulnerable to surprise attacks and persistent gnawing or pecking.

2. The box turtle has a distinctive hinged lowered shell (the box) that allows it to completely enclose itself.

3. Cooter (n.) name for some types of freshwater terrapin in southern U.S., especially the common box-turtle, 1835 (first attested 1827 in phrase drunk as a Cooter, but this perhaps is a colloquial form of unrelated coot), of uncertain origin, perhaps from obsolete verb coot "to copulate" (1660s), which is of unknown origin