98 Fun Facts About Turtles & Tortoises

How many recognized species of sea turtles exist today?

7 is the usual count, though some researchers make it eight by treating the Pacific's black turtle as a species of its own rather than a kind of green turtle.

What is the top section of a turtle's shell called?

The carapace is the domed upper shell, fused to the turtle's backbone and skeleton, which is why a turtle can never crawl out of its shell.

Bishop Tomás de Berlanga stumbled on the Galápagos and its giant tortoises in 1535 while drifting off course to where?

Peru was his destination: sailing from Panama to settle a quarrel between conquistadors, his ship was carried west by currents, and he reported tortoises big enough to carry a man.

What determines the sex of most turtle hatchlings?

Incubation temperature decides it: warmer sand hatches mostly females and cooler sand males, so a warming climate could tip whole nesting beaches toward daughters.

What was the name of the last known Pinta Island tortoise?

Lonesome George was found alone on Pinta in 1971 and lived four more decades in captivity; every attempt to breed him with females of related tortoises failed, and his line ended with him in 2012.

Which sea turtle species has a shell historically prized for making jewelry and hair combs?

Hawksbill sea turtle shell is the 'tortoiseshell' of old combs and jewelry; the trade hunted the species almost to extinction before most countries banned it in the 1970s.

What is the primary diet of adult green sea turtles?

Seagrass and algae make up the adult diet, the only plant-eating menu among sea turtles; young turtles in the open ocean also eat animal prey and turn to grazing as they grow.

What is the bottom part of a turtle's shell called?

The plastron is the turtle's flat belly plate; the word came into English via French from the Italian piastrone, a breastplate, which is exactly what it resembles.

In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, which turtle wears a blue mask?

Leonardo and his brothers nearly got Japanese names; when none sounded right, the creators opened an art history book and borrowed four Renaissance masters instead.

Which is the smallest of the sea turtle species?

Kemp's ridley, about 2 feet long and under 100 pounds, is the smallest sea turtle; it is named for Richard Kemp, a Key West fisherman who sent a specimen off to be identified.

Because Galápagos tortoises can live for months without food or water, which crews stacked them alive in ships' holds as fresh meat?

Whaling crews took more than 100,000 tortoises between the 1780s and 1860s, since the animals stayed alive for months in the hold, and the trade helped empty some islands entirely.

What are nesting sea turtles thought to read to find their way back to the beach where they hatched?

Earth's magnetic field: each stretch of coast has its own magnetic signature, and the leading idea is that hatchlings imprint on it and steer back to it as adults years later.

What do leatherback sea turtles primarily eat?

Leatherback sea turtles feed almost exclusively on jellyfish. Their throats contain backward-pointing spines that help them swallow slippery prey.

The alligator snapping turtle is native to rivers draining into which body of water?

Gulf of Mexico rivers are its only home; so many were trapped for their meat in the 1970s that numbers crashed, and states across most of its range now protect the turtle.

The alligator snapping turtle catches fish by wiggling a worm-like lure found where on its body?

On its tongue: the turtle lies still on the river bed with jaws open and twitches the lure until a curious fish swims right in, a trick biologists call aggressive mimicry.

What is the mass nesting event of sea turtles called, particularly associated with olive ridley turtles?

Arribada nights can bring tens of thousands of females ashore together; the sand gets so crowded that later arrivals dig up eggs laid by earlier ones.

Which famous naturalist studied the giant tortoises of the Galápagos Islands in 1835?

Charles Darwin was put on the trail by the islands' acting governor, Nicholas Lawson, who boasted he could tell at a glance which island any tortoise had come from.

A turtle excluder device is an escape hatch built into the trawl nets that catch which seafood?

Shrimp nets used to drown sea turtles; a grid of bars in the net's neck now steers a turtle out through a flap while the catch slips through, and US boats have had to carry one since 1987.

Some turtles spend winter under pond ice without surfacing, absorbing oxygen from the water through which body part?

Their rear end: the cloaca is rich in blood vessels and can pull oxygen straight from the water, enough to keep a cold, barely ticking turtle alive under the ice.

Harriet, a Galápagos tortoise long said to have sailed on HMS Beagle, spent her last years at which TV naturalist's zoo?

Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo was Harriet's home when she died in 2006, aged about 175; DNA tests showed she came from an island the Beagle's naturalist never visited.

What is each keratin plate on a turtle's shell called?

Scutes are made of keratin, like fingernails; pond turtles shed them one at a time as they grow, while tortoises never do, simply adding new layers underneath.

What is unique about the leatherback compared with other sea turtles?

It lacks a bony shell: leathery skin stretches over a mosaic of small bones instead, and that flexible back can give under pressure, helping it dive deeper than any hard-shelled turtle.

In British usage, a small turtle that lives in fresh or brackish water is traditionally called what?

A terrapin, a word borrowed from an Algonquian language of Virginia, is British English for a small freshwater turtle; Americans mostly keep it for one species of the coastal salt marshes.

Roughly how deep has a leatherback sea turtle been recorded diving?

4,000 feet is roughly the record: a tagged leatherback reached about 1,280 metres, deeper than most whales and seals ever go and far beyond any hard-shelled turtle.

In the TMNT franchise, what is the name of the turtles' rat sensei?

Master Splinter raised the four turtles as his sons and taught them ninjutsu; the comics made him a ninja's pet rat, but the 1987 cartoon turned him into the ninja himself, mutated.

What is the scientific order that includes all turtles and tortoises?

Testudines comes from testudo, Latin for tortoise, itself from testa, 'shell'; a shell built into the skeleton is the one thing every member of the order shares.

The gopher tortoise is the official state tortoise of which U.S. state?

Florida named the gopher tortoise its state tortoise in 2008; the deep burrows it digs shelter more than 350 other species, which is why biologists call it a keystone species.

Which organ lets sea turtles get rid of the excess salt from the seawater they drink?

Tear glands: a salt gland behind each eye pumps out concentrated brine, which is why nesting females often look as though they are weeping.

As of 2025, Jonathan, a giant tortoise on Saint Helena, holds which Guinness World Records title?

Oldest known living land animal: Jonathan hatched around 1832, a date worked out because he was already full-grown when he reached Saint Helena in 1882; in 2022 he also became the oldest tortoise on record.

In which tradition does the world rest on a giant turtle's back?

In Hindu mythology, the god Vishnu took the form of a giant turtle (Kurma) to support Mount Mandara. Many cultures, including some Native American traditions, also feature world-turtle cosmology.

In the original Ninja Turtles comics of the 1980s, all four brothers wore masks of which single color?

Red was the only mask color in the comics, which were black and white inside; the cartoon then gave each brother his own color so viewers could tell them apart by more than their weapons.

Most turtles pull the head straight back into the shell and belong to the suborder Cryptodira, a name meaning what?

Hidden neck: cryptodires draw the neck back out of sight inside the shell, while the other living group, the side-necked turtles, tuck it sideways under the shell's rim.

Which island nation is home to the Aldabra giant tortoise?

Seychelles: its Aldabra Atoll has no fresh water on the surface and was too remote and rugged to farm, so little of it was ever cleared, and about 100,000 giant tortoises still roam it.

Which turtle, the most widely traded in the world, is a familiar pet-shop species across the United States?

The red-eared slider, named for the red stripe behind each eye, is the world's most traded turtle; so many unwanted pets have been released that it is now an invasive species far beyond its home range.

A nesting sea turtle scoops out the chamber for her eggs using which part of her body?

Her hind flippers scoop out the sand like cupped hands, one after the other; a green turtle then drops a hundred or more eggs into the hole and covers them the same way.

Which turtle has a hinged underside that lets it shut its shell completely with itself inside?

Box turtles can pull in head, legs and tail and swing the hinged underside of the shell shut, a defense that leaves a predator with nothing to grab.

DNA studies suggest that a turtle's closest living relatives are crocodilians and which other animals?

Birds: genetic studies group turtles with the archosaurs, the crocodile-and-bird line, overturning older anatomical work that placed turtles closer to lizards and snakes.

A Galápagos tortoise who fathered hundreds of offspring and helped save his kind was brought home from which American zoo?

San Diego Zoo sent him home after decades away from the islands, and Diego went on to father an estimated 40 percent of the young tortoises released on Española.

What is the name for the study of reptiles and amphibians, which includes turtles?

Herpetology comes from the Greek herpeton, a creeping animal, which is why enthusiasts call reptiles and amphibians 'herps' and a trip out to find them 'herping'.

Which sea turtle species nests exclusively in Australia?

Flatback sea turtle hatchlings are unusually big and, unlike other sea turtles, never head out into the open ocean, growing up instead in shallow waters over the continental shelf.

The oldest fully shelled turtle fossils date from the same period as which early animals?

Early dinosaurs: Proganochelys, a fully shelled turtle from about 210 million years ago, shared the Late Triassic with them, and turtles went on to outlive the giants.

In Finding Nemo, which sea turtle helps Marlin and Dory ride the East Australian Current?

Crush, the laid-back surfer-dude turtle, was voiced by the film's own director, Andrew Stanton, and proved popular enough to get his own Disney park show, Turtle Talk with Crush.

As of 2025, which turtle, down to a handful of known individuals, is considered the world's rarest?

The Yangtze giant softshell turtle lost its last known captive female in 2019, when she died at China's Suzhou Zoo after a fifth attempt at artificial insemination with the zoo's elderly male.

What do baby sea turtles use to break out of their eggs?

A temporary egg tooth, called a caruncle, slits the leathery shell; the hatchlings then wait in the sand for days and dig out together, since leaving in a crowd improves each one's odds.

In the Super Mario games, which turtle-like enemies pull into a shell that Mario can kick at other foes?

Koopa Troopas debuted in Super Mario Bros. in 1985; stomp one and it ducks into its shell, which then becomes a weapon, an idea that later gave Mario Kart its famous shells.

Of roughly 1,000 sea turtle hatchlings, how many are thought to reach adulthood?

About one in 1,000 is the usual estimate: seabirds, raccoons and crabs pick hatchlings off on the sand, and fish wait for those that make it into the water.

In which 1980s fantasy film does the young hero seek advice from Morla, a giant turtle in a swamp?

The NeverEnding Story sends Atreyu into the Swamps of Sadness, where Morla, too old and weary to care what happens, sneezes him off his perch and points him to a distant oracle.

Where do many young sea turtles spend their so-called 'lost years' after leaving the nesting beach?

Adrift in seaweed mats: hatchlings swim offshore and settle into floating rafts of Sargassum, which give them both food and cover until they are big enough to return to the coast.

What is the largest freshwater turtle species in North America?

Alligator snapper males can top 200 pounds and almost never leave the water; only females haul out, trudging a short way inland to dig a nest.

Hatching at night, baby sea turtles find the ocean mainly by crawling toward what?

The brightest horizon is normally the sea, glittering under moon and stars; beachfront lights now pull thousands of hatchlings the wrong way, toward roads and buildings.

The East African pancake tortoise uses its flat, flexible shell to do what?

Squeeze into narrow rock crevices: instead of hiding in its thin, bendy shell, the pancake tortoise sprints for the nearest crack in the rocks and wedges itself in.

The South American mata mata captures prey using which technique?

Suction feeding: the mata mata lunges and gapes so fast that the rush of water sweeps a fish in whole; until then its bark-like shell lets it pass for river debris.

Archelon, the largest turtle ever documented, shared its seas with mosasaurs in which period?

Late Cretaceous seas split North America in two, which is why the biggest Archelon, a 4.6-metre giant, was dug out of landlocked South Dakota.

Male Stupendemys, car-sized freshwater turtles of prehistoric South America, carried which weapons on the front of their shells?

Horns jutted forward on either side of the neck in males, and deep scars on the fossils suggest they were used to fight rivals; the first shells were dug up in Venezuela in 1972.

Tu'i Malila, a tortoise kept at Tonga's royal palace until the 1960s, was reputedly a gift from which explorer?

James Cook is said to have given her to Tonga's royal family in 1777; if so she outlived him by nearly two centuries, dying at about 188 years old.

Adwaita, a giant tortoise said to have lived some 250 years, died in 2006 at a zoo in which country?

India's Alipore Zoo in Kolkata kept Adwaita from the 1870s; legend made him a pet of Robert Clive a century earlier, a story never proved, and his shell was to be carbon-dated to settle his age.

The North American wood turtle stomps its front feet on the ground to lure what to the surface?

Earthworms surface when the turtle stomps its front feet in turn; the thumping is thought to mimic a burrowing mole, sending worms fleeing upward into the turtle's reach.

Testudo, mascot of the University of Maryland, is what kind of turtle?

Testudo is a diamondback terrapin cast in bronze outside the main library; students rub his nose for luck and pile offerings around him before final exams.

The Chinese softshell turtle gets rid of urea through which unusual route?

Its mouth: the turtle dunks its head and rinses urea out through its mouth lining, so it need not drink the salty water of its brackish home to flush the waste out the usual way.

Mayumba National Park, possibly the world's biggest leatherback nesting site, is in which country?

Mayumba National Park lies on Gabon's southern Atlantic coast; it was created in 2002 largely to protect leatherbacks, which nest there in the tens of thousands between October and April.

Leatherbacks can hunt in cold northern seas because, unusually for a reptile, they do what?

Stay warmer than the water: a leatherback's sheer bulk, thick fat and constantly working swimming muscles hold in body heat, a trick known as gigantothermy.

The loggerhead sea turtle is named for its oversized head, which is built mainly for what?

Crushing hard-shelled prey: the big head anchors jaw muscles strong enough to crack whelks, conchs and horseshoe crabs on the sea floor.

Kemp's ridley is the only sea turtle that typically comes ashore to nest at what time?

In daylight hours: Kemp's ridleys nest by day in mass arrivals, nearly all on one Mexican beach, Rancho Nuevo, where tens of thousands once came ashore and only a few hundred did by the 1980s.

The green sea turtle is named for the colour of which part of its body?

Its fat: the shell is brown or olive, but the layer of fat beneath it is green, and that hidden color, not the shell, gave the species its name.

What is the Hawaiian name for the green sea turtle, a local symbol of luck and longevity?

Honu were hunted in Hawaii until federal protection arrived in 1978, and nest counts there have risen since; nēnē and heʻe mean goose and octopus.

Tortuguero, one of the Caribbean's most important green turtle nesting beaches, lies in which Central American country?

Tortuguero in Costa Rica is among the Caribbean's most important green turtle nesting beaches; biologist Archie Carr's work there led to the Caribbean Conservation Corporation and, in 1975, a national park.

In which fantasy series does a planet ride on four elephants standing on the giant turtle Great A'Tuin?

Discworld's flat planet is carried through space by Great A'Tuin, a star turtle; Terry Pratchett borrowed the image from old myths and set 41 novels on its back.

Gamera, the giant flying turtle of Japanese cinema, was launched in 1965 to cash in on which monster's success?

Godzilla had made a fortune for the studio Toho, so its rival Daiei answered with a jet-propelled turtle; Gamera went on to star in twelve films of his own.

Which Super Mario villain did Shigeru Miyamoto first picture as an ox before he was redrawn as a turtle?

Bowser was modelled on the Ox King from the animated film Alakazam the Great until colleague Takashi Tezuka said he looked more like a turtle, and the design followed.

Dr. Seuss said the power-hungry Yertle the Turtle stood for which real dictator?

Dr. Seuss said Yertle was Adolf Hitler; his rule over the pond and grab for territory mirror the Nazi regime, until a burp from Mack at the bottom of the stack topples him.

The 'turtle ship', a warship roofed over and studded with iron spikes, helped which country repel Japanese invasions in the 1590s?

Korea's Admiral Yi Sun-sin sent turtle ships, their spiked roofs built to stop boarders, against the invasion fleets and never lost a battle in the war.

Mock turtle soup traditionally imitates turtle meat with which ingredient?

Calf's head stood in for costly green turtle and gave the soup the same gelatinous texture, which is why the Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland is drawn with a calf's head and hooves.

'Turtle graphics', where a cursor draws lines as it moves, is a signature feature of which language?

Logo, created in 1967, lets children steer a 'turtle', either a small floor robot or a cursor on screen, and work out its path by imagining walking it themselves.

The Turtle, the first submarine known to have been used in combat, tried to sink British warships during which war?

The Revolutionary War: Yale student David Bushnell built the one-man Turtle, and in 1776 Sergeant Ezra Lee took it under HMS Eagle in New York Harbor but could not fix the mine to her hull.

The desert tortoise is the official state reptile of Nevada and which other state?

California adopted the desert tortoise as state reptile in 1972 and Nevada in 1989; the animal escapes desert heat and cold by spending about 95 percent of its life underground in burrows.

The critically endangered ploughshare tortoise survives only around Baly Bay in which country?

Madagascar: the ploughshare tortoise survives only around Baly Bay in the northwest; conservationists deliberately engrave identifying marks into its shell to make it less desirable to poachers and collectors.

In Chinese cosmology, the Black Tortoise of the north is usually shown with which other animal?

Snake: the guardian is usually drawn as a serpent coiled around a tortoise, yet its Chinese name, Xuanwu, means 'Black Warrior' and mentions neither animal.

In Greek myth, which infant god made the first lyre from a tortoise shell and traded it to Apollo?

Hermes, a day old, scooped out a tortoise's shell, strung it and played; when Apollo caught him stealing cattle, the infant god bought forgiveness with the new instrument.

Roman legionaries overlapped what to form the 'testudo', or tortoise formation?

Shields locked in front and overhead made a shell against arrows; the historian Cassius Dio claimed a well-formed testudo was strong enough for horses and carts to be driven across it.

The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic was published in 1984 by which company?

Mirage Studios was a joke of a name, since no real studio existed; Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird paid for the first issue with a tax refund and a loan from Eastman's uncle.

The Ninja Turtles' rat mentor was written as a play on which Daredevil character?

Stick, Daredevil's blind mentor, was spoofed as the Turtles' rat teacher, just as Daredevil's ninja enemies, the Hand, became the Turtles' Foot Clan.

Living turtles have no teeth, so what do they use to bite and cut their food?

A sharp-edged beak of keratin sheathes the jaws; the oldest known turtles still had teeth, which their descendants lost as the beak took over.

Master Oogway, an ancient tortoise who chooses the Dragon Warrior, is a character in which animated film series?

Kung Fu Panda's Oogway, voiced by stage actor Randall Duk Kim, stuns his pupils by naming the clumsy panda Po as Dragon Warrior instead of one of their trained fighters.

John Green's novel 'Turtles All the Way Down' takes its title from which philosophical idea?

Infinite regress: the title echoes the old joke of a world resting on a turtle that stands on another turtle, and so on 'all the way down', a fit for a heroine trapped in spiralling thoughts.

Shang dynasty oracle bones were made from ox shoulder blades and which part of a turtle?

The lower shell was drilled with pits and touched with a hot rod until it cracked; diviners read the cracks as answers and carved the questions alongside, some of China's earliest writing.

In Roald Dahl's 'Esio Trot', how does Mr Hoppy make his neighbour's pet appear to grow?

Swapping in bigger ones: Mr Hoppy buys tortoises of every size from pet shops and keeps trading Alfie for a slightly larger one, while Mrs Silver credits the spell he gave her.

Bert the Turtle starred in a 1952 US civil defense film teaching children to do what?

Duck and Cover: Bert pulls into his shell when a monkey sets off a firecracker, showing children how to drop and shelter from an atomic flash; the film joined the National Film Registry in 2004.

In Zeno's famous paradox, which Greek hero can never overtake a tortoise given a head start?

Achilles, the swift-footed hero, can never catch the tortoise because Zeno argued the gap can be subdivided forever, so catching up would take infinitely many steps.

Which Greek playwright was said to have been killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle?

Aeschylus, the legend goes, died near Gela when an eagle mistook his head for a rock and dropped a tortoise on it to crack the shell; Valerius Maximus recorded the tale.

Who picked the common snapping turtle as New York's state reptile before lawmakers confirmed it?

Elementary school children picked it in a statewide vote and lawmakers agreed in 2006; the snapper fights fiercely when cornered on land, yet in water it would sooner slip away and hide.

Why is the common musk turtle nicknamed the 'stinkpot'?

It releases a foul odor from scent glands along the edge of its shell when handled or attacked, apparently to make a predator think twice and let go.

What makes up most of a hawksbill sea turtle's diet on tropical reefs?

Sea sponges make up most of what a hawksbill eats, including kinds packed with toxins and glass-like spicules that almost nothing else will touch, and the poisons can build up in its flesh.

Gahirmatha beach in India's Odisha state, site of vast olive ridley mass nestings, faces which body of water?

The Bay of Bengal washes Gahirmatha, counted the world's largest olive ridley rookery; so many females arrive together that the beach and its waters were made a marine sanctuary in 1997.

A turtle's shell is built mainly from modified versions of which bones?

Ribs, broadened and fused with the backbone, form the dome; a 220-million-year-old fossil turtle had a full belly shield but only widened ribs on top, a shell half built.

In the Pokémon games, the turtle starter Squirtle evolves first into what?

Wartortle arrives at level 16 and Blastoise at level 36; the Pokédex calls Wartortle a symbol of longevity and says algae on its shell marks a very old one.

Australia's Mary River turtle earned the nickname 'punk turtle' because of what?

Algae growing like hair on its head gives it a green punk hairdo; hatchlings were sold in Australian pet shops as 'penny turtles' for years before science formally described the species in 1994.

Galápagos tortoises with long necks and 'saddleback' shells come from islands with what conditions?

Dry lowlands with sparse ground plants: the raised shell front and long neck let these tortoises stretch up to cactus pads, while tortoises on lusher islands stay domed and short-necked.

Cecil Turtle got the better of which Looney Tunes star three cartoons in a row?

Bugs Bunny was outsmarted in all three of their cartoons; in the first, Cecil posted look-alike cousins along the racecourse so that a turtle always seemed to be ahead of him.