Turtles and Tortoises

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Turtles live in many various habitats such as rivers, lakes, ponds, salt water, tidal areas, river banks, slow streams, and coral reefs. Female sea turtles come on land only to lay their eggs while tortoises live their entire lives on land.

Although it may seem that turtles are an unimportant species to the human race, but they play a big role in both the environment and to humans. For decades, turtle meat and baby eggs have been used for food. Humans have also used turtle shells as ornaments. Unfortunately, the use of these things have endangered many species of turtles and tortoises.

Turtles are the only reptile with a shell. They use their shells as protection. Another interesting fact is that the mothers lay eggs on the same beach that they hatched.

They have their shells plus a skeleton on their inside. They have a bony shell. The upper part is called carapace. The lower is the plastron covered with hard shells also known as scutes.

The mothers lay their eggs at the same beach that they were hatched. Mother turtles go onto the beach at night and dig a hole in the sand that will hold about 120 eggs. She will then cover it up. Nesting is from April to October, approximately 55 days. Sometimes if the weather is warmer it tends to produce more females than males.

Turtles have outer, middle, and inner ears which help them hear quite well. They can hear low pitched noises just as well as humans can. The turtle nervous system includes the brain, nerves, and spinal cord, and cells called neurons are the signal transmitters throughout the system.

Their hearts have a left and right atrium, left and right aorta. They have a full circulatory system and a multi chambered heart. Turtles have a squishy layer of muscle between the shell and lungs that helps them to breathe

Their kidneys are responsible for filtering the blood and removing harmful waste. The waste is concentrated and sent to the bladder as urine.

Turtles and tortoises have a very similar digestive system to humans with many of the same organs. Turtles have a small intestine that have a digestive enzymes that are added to food to break down the proteins and crabs.Turtles lack the enzymes that break down dairy products so they can not eat any cheese, milk, or yogurt. They like to eat cantaloupes and crickets, they will also eat plants.

Some examples of turtles include snapping turtles, yellow mud turtles, spotted turtles, chicken turtles, and wood turtles.

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