Turtle Race: Boys vs. Girls

[tttaylorrr]

sea turtles LOVE to travel! the Leatherback sea turtle can travel more than 10,000 miles every year between foraging grounds.

[Ax01]

1 gross seaturtle fact and 2 fun seaturtle facts. girl turtle power takes their first lead!

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[Avsha531]

This is the Mary River Turtle, also known as the punk rock turtle due to the algae which grows on its head. That is one hardcore bada** reptile

[ladywhipple02]

From wikipedia:

Turtle fossils of hatchling and nestling size have been documented in the scientific literature.[66] Paleontologists from North Carolina State University have found the fossilized remains of the world's largest turtle in a coal mine in Colombia. The specimen named as Carbonemys cofrinii is around 60 million years old and nearly 2.4 m (8 ft) long.[67]

In 2005, the holotype specimen was discovered in the Cerrejón coal mine by a North Carolina State University doctoral student named Edwin Cadena. It had a shell that measured about 1.72 metres (5 ft 8 in), making it one of the world's largest turtles.[2][3]

The jaws of Carbonemys were massive and would be powerful enough to eat crocodylians, that were abundant in the first neotropical forest of the Cerrejón Formation.[4] This turtle coexisted with the giant boid, Titanoboa.

[tttaylorrr]

Leatherbacks are neat animals!

DID U KNO? the Leatherback sea turtle has a third eye! well not really...the Leatherback has a lightly pink spot on the top of its head directly above their brain. this spot is so thin that it is thought that this spot allows light to reach the pineal gland which may be used for migration.

The pineal gland is an endocrine gland found in vertebrates which affects wake/sleep patterns and functions to signal day length. This combined with a change in temperature can signal a change in day length and season which indicates migration time.

link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...lls-180952703/

[ladywhipple02]

The flesh of turtles, calipash or calipee, was and still is considered a delicacy in a number of cultures.[77] Turtle soup has been a prized dish in Anglo-American cuisine,[78] and still remains so in some parts of Asia.[which?] Gopher tortoise stew was popular with some groups in Florida.[79]

Turtles remain a part of the traditional diet on the island of Grand Cayman, so much so that when wild stocks became depleted, a turtle farm was established specifically to raise sea turtles for their meat. The farm also releases specimens to the wild as part of an effort to repopulate the Caribbean Sea.[80]

Fat from turtles is also used in the Caribbean and in Mexico as a main ingredient in cosmetics, marketed under its Spanish name crema de tortuga.[81]

Turtle plastrons (the part of the shell that covers a tortoise from the bottom) are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine; according to statistics, Taiwan imports hundreds of tons of plastrons every year.[82] A popular medicinal preparation based on powdered turtle plastron (and a variety of herbs) is the guilinggao jelly;[83] these days, though, it is typically made with only herbal ingredients.

[tttaylorrr]

it's raining women! because of climate change.

the sex of a sea turtle is not determined by chromosomes, but by incubation temperature! as climate change continues to warm most of the planet, its impact is having a huge effect on sea turtle populations and resulting in lots of female babies:

Out of a population of about 200,000 turtles, scientists found that 99.1 percent of juveniles were female, 99.8 percent of subadults and 86.8 percent of the entire population was female. Southern populations of turtles in Australia, which live on cooler beaches, show much lower impact. There, researchers found the ratio was about 65 to 69 percent female turtles.

this isn't going to have a huge impact on turtle populations, but scientists say it can!

But eventually, there may be consequences. “Oh yes, there are a few males remaining, and there will be for decades to come,” sea turtle researcher David Owens, professor emeritus at College of Charleston tells Guarino. “But they will eventually die off. I predict that very soon the [northern Great Barrier Reef] population will start to see reduced fertility at the nesting beach if it is not already happening.”

link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...les-180967780/

[ladywhipple02]

TurtleSAt is a smartphone app that has been developed in Australia in honor of World Turtle Day to help in the conservation of fresh water turtles in Australia. The app will allow the user to identify turtles with a picture guide and the location of turtles using the phones GPS to record sightings and help find hidden turtle nesting grounds. The app has been developed because there has been a high per cent of decline of fresh water turtles in Australia due to foxes, droughts, and urban development. The aim of the app is to reduce the number of foxes and help with targeting feral animal control.

[tttaylorrr]

Turtles on Treadmills! For Science!

a cute youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itkAuPubbxI

But in this modern world, lights are everywhere, and the tiny reptiles can get disoriented and take a more circuitous route to find water. This exhausting venture can sometimes last hours. How does all that exercise affect the little creatures once they make it to water? Researchers at Florida Atlantic University decided to put some baby turtles to the test to figure it out.

then they got to swim with little swimsuits!!!

After the workout, the researchers then fitted the turtles into little swimsuits connected to a harness and put them in a tank of water, observing how they swam for two hours. Meanwhile, the researchers measured vital signs like oxygen consumption, glucose, plasma lactate levels as well as the number of swimming strokes they performed.

the results:

What they found is that the tiny turtles are incredibly tough. “We were completely surprised by the results of this study,” Milton says in the release. “We were expecting that the hatchlings would be really tired from the extended crawling and that they would not be able to swim well.” That turned out not to be the case. “They are, in fact, crawling machines,” she says. “They crawl and rest, crawl and rest and that’s why they weren’t too tired to swim.”

link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...mas-180967639/

[ladywhipple02]

This stuff is super interesting....

Researchers have recently discovered a turtle's organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes.