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It wiggles its tongue to attract a hungry fish and then snaps down on it with its strong jaw. It also eats aquatic plants, snakes, frogs, fish, worms, clams, crayfish and other turtles. All turtles lay eggs. They find a place on land to lay their eggs, dig a nest into the sand or dirt and then walk away. No species of turtle nurtures their young. Turtles reach the age to mate at different times. Some species fight for the right to mate with a female, while others seduce her with a mating ritual.
To mate, male and female turtles intertwine their tails so that their shell openings line up perfectly. Sea turtles travel from the ocean to lay eggs on beaches. Usually, sea turtles lay around eggs in a nest, though the flatback turtle only lays 50 at a time. The temperature of the sand affects the sex of the turtle.
The perfect beach temperature produces an equal number of male and female offspring. Due to rising temperatures, too many sea turtle females are being born, contributing to the decline in species numbers, according to the Sea Turtle Conservancy.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN , many turtle species are listed as threatened, endangered or critically endangered.
For example, the ploughshare tortoise and radiated tortoise are estimated to be extinct in the next 45 years. The earliest known turtle fossils are from the Triassic Period, about million years ago. Anatomically, they are nearly identical to modern turtles. Sea turtles have been around for million years , according to a recent analysis. Turtles shed their scutes to remove old growth and make room for new scutes to grow through underneath.
One of the reasons they bask in the sun is to dry their scutes and help them flake off. Their keratin is constantly growing without shedding, pushing up old growth to give the shell a layered look. Turtle tortoise? Tortoises have feet that are padded and stumpy, with horned, scaly toes, looking a little like tiny elephant feet.
Their chunky elephantine legs help tortoises to carry their weight around on land. Turtle feet are very different, being either webbed with long claws to help them latch onto floating objects and climb in and out of water, or in the case of aquatic turtles, there are true flippers rather than feet.
Turtles on the other hand — with their sleek body and shell shapes, and webbed feet or flippers — are built for aquatic life, and are excellent swimmers. Turtles and tortoises are found primarily in tropical and semi-tropical climates as they all require warm external temperatures. Both turtles and tortoises are very adaptive animals, with turtles found on every continent except Antarctica, and tortoises found everywhere except Antarctica and Australasia.
The biggest variety of turtles are found in Southeastern North America and Asia, whilst the most diverse number of tortoise species can be found in Africa. Both tortoises and turtles need plenty of nutrients and minerals to promote healthy shell growth, but have evolved to have different diets.
Tortoises are primarily herbivores, with their diet varying depending on specific species and age. They tend to have a wide diet, slowly covering large distances, grazing on leaves, weeds, grasses, fruit, and vegetables as they come across them. Turtles are omnivores, eating a similar variety of plants to tortoises, and supplementing this with protein sources ranging from worms and insects to jellyfish and small fish. A sea turtle left devours a jellyfish, whilst a tortoise chews a lettuce leaf.
Tortoises are animals with extremely long lifespans — considerably longer than turtles. The average lifespan for a turtle is around 30 years, with larger sea turtles averaging around 65 years.
Tortoises, by contrast, have an average lifespan of 90 years, with their lifespan generally linked to their size.
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