Thursday, July 21, 2011

Types of Turtles

Turtles are attractive interesting reptile which has unique shape. They have shells that protect the turtle. This is self defense equipment for turtles. Shells are divided into two areas upper (carapace) and lower (plastron). They also have beaks. Their beaks are often as sharp as a knife. Even there are teeth in their beaks they don’t use them to chew but to break up their food.

Galapagos Tortoise (img source:http://library.sandiegozoo.org/)

Turtle facts: “The first turtles are believed to have lived over 200 million years ago!... and their fossils are almost identical to turtles that are alive today!”-Animal-World.

According to their habitat turtle are divided into 4 types, they are land turtles, (semi terrestrial turtles, semi-aquatic turtles), and full-aquatic turtles.
Land turtles are usually called tortoise. They are lived in land/terrestrial and do not hibernate. Most of them are vegetarian. Semi-terrestrial or Terrapins commonly live both in water and the land. They are both carnivorous and vegetarian. There are also Semi-aquatic turtles, spending time most in water but need a sun. They usually bask on the stone or wood in the land. They were also a good swimmer. The most famous semi-aquatic turtle is red ear slider that had been known world wide. Finally there are turtles who actually aquatic, full aquatic turtles. They live in a lake, river, and also in the sea, commonly known as sea turtle.

These are some types that included to the 4 categories of turtles.
Land turtles: Indian star
Semi-terrestrial: Manouria emys, Eastern box turtle
Semi-aquatic: red ear slider, yellow bellied.
Full aquatic: soft shelled, sea turtles.

Reference:
Animal World
PetTurtleCareGuide.com

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