Turtles

Ever since I can remember, I have always liked turtles, and some people have said that I am like one in some ways, especially being slow and quiet. Turtles do not have a voice or a call. Most of them are generally peaceful. The rare exception being the snapping turtles, which are voracious carnivores, and some tortoises, which wrestle and try to turn each other upside down when they disagree about something. Other than that, they are not aggressive, and prefer to avoid fighting whenever possible. Some turtles eat a lot of meat when they are young, and then switch to a vegetarian diet as they get older. Others, especially the large tortoises, are life long vegetarians. To be like them is not to be compatible with today's dominant culture, which is all about competition, haste, and greed. I really do prefer to live life in the slow lane.

There is no certainty about what turtles evolved from, or exactly when. It is known that they go back at least as far as the Triassic period, around 200 to 250 million years ago, so they predate many of the dinosaurs, as well as snakes and lizards. Many different types of turtles and tortoises have lived in the past, and are extinct today. In the case of the larger land tortoises, hunting by early man is suspected to be the cause of their demise. The largest turtle living today is the leatherback sea turtle, which can have a shell length of 6 to 7 feet and weigh about a ton. On land, it's the Galapagos tortoise, with a 4 foot shell length and a weight of almost 700 pounds. The largest known sea turtle that ever existed was Archelon Ischyros, living in the Late Cretaceous period and being about 15 feet long, with a weight of about 2 to 2 and half tons, and the largest land tortoise was Testudo Atlas, or Colossochelys, about 8 feet long, and 6 feet high at the top of the shell. Both of these giants are extinct today. The smallest turtle lives in South Africa and is only 3 inches when fully grown. Those little turtles that used to be in the pet stores were very young sliders, which could grow to about 8 inches long, but rarely lived long enough to grow to full size, due to the poor quality food and living conditions they endured as pets. I wish I had known more about them when I was a kid. Perhaps the ones I had then would still be alive now.

The skin of a turtle does not moult like that of a snake. Instead the old skin comes off in small sheets, and they rub against rocks or pieces of wood to remove them. The plates on their shells are called scutes, and new slightly larger ones grow under the old. This is how they grow their shells as they get bigger. It is possible to get an approximation of their age by counting the rings on the plates, from center outward, but they usually grow more than one per year, and the small ones in the center sometimes fall off. It's not as accurate as counting the rings in a tree. They can see very well at night, but are color blind, and often don't see clearly at a distance. In nature, they usually live a very long life, so maybe they have time to find each other anyway.

Turtles usually have long claws on their front feet, which they use to climb up on logs and rocks. They love to sit in the sun and will do so for hours. They are usually very alert and will quickly plunge into the water if they see you, even if you are many yards away on land. Given their often poor eye sight, they may not be able to tell the difference between a harmless creature and a predator. It's not easy to get a good photograph of them unless you have a very good camera with a telephoto lens. Sea turtles don't sun as land turtles do. They prefer to stay in the water for their entire lives. They have tear glands that concentrate the salt water from their blood and wash it over their eyes. This also enables them to drink sea water, since these glands are constantly removing salt from their blood. Female sea turtles go on land only to lay their eggs in the sand and bury them. When the little turtles hatch, they immediately head straight for the water. I have seen some pictures of baby sea turtles, especially the "green turtle" and they are really cute. You can't say that about most other reptiles. Sadly, many species of sea turtles are endangered, and may not be around for another century. As usual, it is human greed that is the greatest threat to their survival. People hunt their eggs, and kill and eat them when they come ashore to lay them. Many places where sea turtles lay their eggs have been destroyed by development. Sea turtles also fall victim to litter in the ocean, especially plastic bags. They eat jellyfish, and they often mistake one of these bags for a meal and choke to death on it. Over millions of years, many other species of animals have evolved and died out while sea turtles lived almost unchanged, but if you have small children, they may grow up to see an ocean with no turtles.