#side-neck turtles

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Abroad with the Broad Shelled Turtle

Chelodina expansa, more commonly known as the broad shelled turtle, is one of the largest freshwater turtles in Australia. The length of their shells can reach up to 50 cm (19.6 in), and their neck accounts for an additional 60-80% of their total length. Because of this length, C. expansa tucks its head in sideways as opposed to pulling it directly into its shell. At maximum, females reach a mass of 6 kg (13.2 lbs), while males only typically weigh about 4 kg (8.8 lbs). The top of the shell, or carapace, is dark brown or green, while the underside is a light cream; the same is true for the broad shelled turtle's head, neck, and legs. The feet are webbed, and have large claws which help adults to dig or fend off predators.

While they spend the winter buried in the mud, the broad shelled turtle is most active during the summer months, from November to March. During this time they are almost entirely aquatic, rarely emerging from the water even to bask. This species lives throughout the river basins of eastern Australia, and can be found in rivers, dams, lakes, and wetlands with plenty of vegetation cover. C. expansa is entirely carnivorous, feeding on crustaceans, aquatic insects, fish, and frogs via ambush, and carrion whenever it can find it. To locate prey, they have a keen sense of smell. Adults are not usually predated upon due to their thick shells and sharp claws, but eggs and juveniles are often prey for foxes, dingos, birds, rakalai, and large fish.

C. expansa nests in the winter, beginning in late February or March. Outside the mating season, individuals are generally solitary, but aggressive territoriality has not been observed. When mating time roles around, males seek out females to mate with; following the encounter, the female climbs out onto the bank and digs a nest for a clutch of anywhere from 5 to 28 eggs. To seal the nest, she then slams her body into the re-piled sand and mud, compacting it into a plug that will remain intact until the following year.

Incubation takes about 360 days, though some nests have been recorded as hatching at 500 days; this process is exceptionally slow due to the two periods of diapause, or developmental delays, that embryos pass through in order to survive the winter. Juveniles hatch in the spring, and emerge from the nest at the first heavy rain. It's unknown how long these turtles can live in the wild, but given their slow growth rate and adult invulnerability it's likely that they can live in excess of 20 years.

Conservation status: The IUCN consideres the broad shelled turtle to be Near Threatened, due primarily to habitat loss and high rates of nest predation by introduced foxes.

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Photos

Claire Treilibs

Catherine Heuzenroeder

Shanna Bignell via iNaturalist

[herpsandbirds]

Irwin's Snapping Turtle (Elseya irwini), family Chelidae, endemic to the Burdekin River in QLD, Australia

Discovered in 1990 by Bob and Steve Irwin, yes THAT Steve Irwin. The turtle is named for him.

Like other Australian side-necked turtles, this species is capable of cloacal respiration (they use small sacs in their cloacal lining like a gill).

photographs by Zoological Association of America & Jeff Tan

[turtleblogatlast]

Headcanon that Leo really loved to give his family massages growing up. We know that he’s good at them from the episode “You Got Served” and we know he likes spas and relaxation and getting massages himself from when he tried to get these in “Bad Hair Day” and from when Donnie made a tennis ball massage machine in “Smart Lair.”

So I think it’d be cute to think that maybe one day Leo overheard Splinter complaining about a bad back and immediately Leo thinks back to a comic or movie or something he saw where a massage helped so he offers to give one and it actually ends up helping Splinter.

Then April swings by the Lair at a later time and mentions her back hurting because of her backpack from school and Leo’s all like “I gotcha!”

From there, he occasionally manages to convince Donnie to sit for one because Donnie’s shrimp posture does not help him any (Leo pokes fun at how sandpaper-y Donnie’s shell is despite knowing it’s always like that and Donnie smacks him for it.) Donnie usually prefers hand massages instead however as all his typing and inventing adds up over time, and shoulder massages too once he starts wearing his battle shells more. Leo also figures out how to give massages to Raph and Mikey’s shells as well, though it’s a struggle at first to not scratch his hands on Raph’s spikes.

I think since Leo has such bad luck with spas and the like, he tries giving himself massages (though it’s not as helpful.) Like, with how his abilities work his legs are probably always aching from his portal jumping and one foot landings, so maybe he branches past back massages out of a need to help his own aches too. (Though he really wants a shell massage himself, the same way he’d give them…the one time with Donnie’s tennis ball massage machine was but a short moment of what Leo’s been missing out on and what he’ll continue missing out on…)

I don’t know, I just think it’d be cute to think Leo could have honed his massaging skill this way in order to help out his family (and also partially because he wants a massage himself.)

[sonette22]

The instant attraction that I felt when I first landed my eyes on Kota Sako. Like, my attention had been on Hayate the whole time before Sako showed up but I knew eyepatch guy will just be a temporary obsession until I found the true man.

[sparcarons]

My turtles from my own tmnt iteration called TMNT:SHELL ESCAPE! :3

[pommigranite]

hey guys!! first adopt/base is now up on my kofi shop <33

this is the first in a series of four! im trying something new with turtle species that aren't the four species of the brothers

(once purchased, you will receive these same pngs without watermarks)

it's an african side-necked turtle if you're curious ^^

[flamestar126]

Game Night with Douglas

Click for better quality

What happens after Douglas leaves for a second

rambling about their outfit in tags

[tmntphantom]

uhm. okay

yeah alright. thats cool

[applecherry108]

So when I designed my version of a Rise!Venus, basing her off of Big Mama’s Assistant, I incorporated elements of the other two ninja turtles I knew of: Jennika and Slash. I didn’t want to make her “girl Leo” so she got a black mask. Assistant had those claw-like hands that felt reminiscent of Jennika, so I rolled with it, but I definitely still wanted her to be Venus.

And then a precious little pink baby came into the picture.

I don’t read the comics, but Lita is ADORABLE. I LOVE her. But her presence did throw a wrench into my amalgamation of an oc. Am I going to stop using my version of Venus? Absolutely not! But when faced with the opportunity to create a girl team I couldn’t pass it up, and despite my initial hesitation, making Venus a literal girl!Leo is hilarious, actually. “Disaster twins” is a fanon thing so let’s give Leo an actual twin.

She’d be voiced by Jenny Slate iykyk 😂😂

[uncharismatic-fauna]

A Mata-Fine Mata Mata turtle

A resident of the Amazon and Orinoco river basins, the mata mata (Chelus fimbriatus) is a species of freshwater turtle found in streams, pools, and wetlands throughout northern South America, from Venezuela to Brazil, as well as the island of Trinidad. This species is almost entirely aquatic, and excursions on land are extremely rare. However, they are not well adapted for swimming in open water, and are thus most commonly seen in shallow bodies of water with soft, muddy bottoms.

C. fimbriatus has a unique appearance among turtle species. The carapace-- the part of the shell that covers the back--it has three ridges running down its length and is often covered in algae, and so resembles tree bark. The head is similarly shaped to resemble leaf litter; it’s triangular, and the fringes around the cheeks and mouth break up the outline. The mata mata’s nose is long and snorkel-like, allowing it to remain just under the surface. Despite its unobtrusive looks, this species is actually quite large; mata mata can grow up to 45 cm (1.5 ft) long and weigh up to 17.2 kg (38 lbs).

Because of its unique body shape and camouflage, the mata mata is well suited to a sedentary life, and has few natural predators. It has extremely poor eyesight, though it does share an adaptation with other nocturnal reptiles that allows the eyes to reflect low levels of light. To compensate, the mata mata relies on its hearing, amplified by a large tympanium on either side of the head, and on the barbels lining its jaw. In addition to being an excellent costume, these barbels allow C. fimbriatus to sense vibrations in the water. The mata mata spends most of its time submurged or buried under the mud, waiting for potential prey like fish, worms, crustaceans, and insects to swim by. When they’re close enough, the mata mata opens its jaws and sucks its target in whole. Individuals have also been recorded herding schools of fish into confined areas before feeding.

The only time the mata mata emerges from the water is to reproduce. Individuals are solitary until September or October, when they begin to seek out mates. When a male encounters a female, he approaches while opening and closing his mouth, extending his limbs, and moving the flaps on the side of his head. If the female is impressed, she allows him to mount. Afterwards, she hauls herself out onto the nearby bank and builds a rudimentary nest from the forest litter. There, she lays 12-28 eggs, which will take about 200 days to hatch. There is no information on how long hatchlings take to fully mature, but individuals can live anywhere from 15-30 years.

Conservation status: The mata mata has not been evaluated by the IUCN, but is threatened by habitat destruction and overharvesting for the pet trade.

If you like what I do, consider leaving a tip or buying me a ko-fi!

Photos

Rune Midtgaard

Christopher Wellner

Joachim S. Muller

[aqua-cultured]

Hey! I saw your tags on the turtle post and I’m a little confused, if we need to remove the turtle from the road we SHOULD drag it by the tail (safest place to grab)? Thanks!

Oh! Sorry my bad on the wording on that

You want to grab the shell above the head and the shell above the tail (not the tail itself)

Like so:

Source: i worked at a museum for 5 years and had to handle snapping turtles as part of the gig

[macisteallinferno]

Joe sketch

[cute-girls-from-vns-anime-manga]

クリスマスみこち by ジェミニ

[slugandthorn]

Annoyed in a very normal way that his portrait from school is the same length as his hair during the game. Don't worry about what's in the tags I'm sure it's a normal amount of text.

[watcherscrown]

*Edit:

Ok I think I've identified your turtle! The picture is a bit blurry but if I'm right they're an m. rivulata, or a Balkan Pond Turtle!

(image via X)

They do live in freshwater so I'm not sure what it was doing at the beach, aside from sunbathing, though they have been spotted in brackish water in the past (X) <- a pdf file if u click that it will download jsyk

The other species it could be is the closely related M. caspica (caspian turtle)

I am never going to complain about Greek Duolingo again

I mean, I am. But still.

So, as some of you know, my family has been coming to this tiny Greek seaside village for several years. Just over a week ago I came out here with my mum, under the impression that early September, after the height of the summer heat, would be a good time to have a holiday. ANYWAY Storm Daniel had other ideas about that. Locally things are improving (I'm actually really pissed off about the disaster-porn tone of most English-language media coverage, but that's another post). The power is back on, there's running water most of the time, and though the latter is not drinkable, a truck from the government came and handled out free bottled water yesterday. But we are currently kind of stuck. Can't do tourist things. Can't go home. There aren't any local flights out until Saturday and the road to Thessaloniki is still closed.

So this evening, feeling kind of aimless and depressed, I go down to the nearest beach with a couple of binbags and start cleaning up in an effort to at least do something positive. I always try to do this at least once out here and obviously, after the storm, there's a lot more plastic and rubbish than usual.

At some point I find this large, round bit of metal - some kind of machinery part, I think -- that's too big for the bag, so I take it to the bins on its own, leaving the rubbish bag on the beach. And when I come back for it, something among the stones beside it moves.

Specifically, it pulls its head sharply inside its shell

So, meanwhile I've been trying to learn some Greek with the help of Duolingo.

I currently have a 33-day streak and... I have questions. Shouldn't I be able to use the past or future tenses by now? Shouldn't I be able to say "x is like y"? I can't do those things. But one thing I absolutely can say all day long is έχω μια χελώνα : I have a turtle.

This is far from the limit of Duolingo Greek's turtle-related content. "An obsession with turtles" is my mother's characterisation. I can inform you that the turtle is not a bird, and, improbably, that the turtle is drinking milk. I can introduce you to a turtle in company with a horse and an elephant. As far as Duolingo is concerned, it really is turtles all the way down.

Now this, you may be able to see, is not a turtle. It has claws rather than flippers. It is a tortoise. I know there are wild tortoises in Greece: my aunt once rescued a pair of them shagging in the middle of the road -- but that was up in the mountains. I've even seen one myself, but it was also on a road and very dead.

I am 95% certain they don't belong on beaches. There's nothing for it to eat, except, unfortunately, a lot of plastic. Even if it gets off the beach it will immediately find itself on a road where it could get hit by a car. I'm pretty sure it must have been washed down by the floodwater and has been just sitting there, dazed, ever since.

Now obviously the first thing I want to do on encountering this unusual animal is to go and tell my mummy, so I do. The tortoise immediately brightens her day. She agrees that the tortoise is not happy on the beach and needs to be taken somewhere safe. it gets surprisingly wriggly when picked up so we put it in a carrier bag with some grapes and cucumber and go looking for somewhere to rehome it.

We find a path leading up between the houses towards a likely-looking field, but before we get very far a dog in a yard goes berserk and a man's head pops over a fence and demands to know what we're doing. He does this in English, as evidently we're just that obviously tourists.

"I found a tortoise on the beach!" I explain. "We want to find somewhere to put it."

"A what," he asks.

"It's like a, you know," I begin and then to my astonishment I find myself saying... "μια χελώνα"

"Oh! A turtle!" he says.

"But from the land. δεν είναι χελώνα", [it is not a turtle,] I say, as I am worried he will tell me to put it back near the sea where I found it. As it turns out it actually IS a χελώνα, Greek does not distinguish between turtles and tortoises, but I don't know that; I can't even name the days of the week or identify any colours other than pink yet, give me a break.

The man's entire demeanour changes and thaws. He does not worry about my turtle-that-is-not-a-turtle conundrum. He knows where οι χελώνες come from and where η χελώνα μας belongs. He leads us through a gate into a courtyard area.

"[somethingsomething] μια χελώνα," he explains to the assembled onlookers, of whom there are, suddenly, a surprising number.

"ΜΙΑ ΧΕΛΩΝΑ!!!" crows the throng of delighted small children, who are, suddenly, everywhere.

"μια χελώνα!" I agree, accepting that at least for current purposes, that is what it is.

"Μπορούμε να δούμε τη χελώνα σας; [can we see your turtle?]" asks an adorable little girl, shyly, and I understand??

The children fucking love looking at the χελώνα and showing it to them is kind of magical?

I finally put the tortoise down on the grass of this wild area off to the side of the courtyard, and marvel aloud that it is weird that I barely know any Greek except how to say μια χελώνα.

"I think she will soon run off," a kind lady called Aspasia assures me, seeing I remain slightly anxious about its fate. "I don't know why I'm saying 'she'. I suppose because χελώνα is feminine in Greek."

"Yes! I know that!" I exclaim, thrilled.

"Well done!" she says. And also she asks if we are OK for drinking water after the storm and if we need any help with anything and is just generally incredibly lovely and now we know more of the neighbours!

So "μια χελώνα" has just become, by a long way, my most-used and most understood and all-around most conversationally successful phrase in Greek. So I guess I have to admit I was wrong to doubt Duolingo's wisdom: it is correct to be obsessed with turtles. And I concede that prior to learning how to count to ten or to distinguish right from left, the simple ability to yell the word TURTLE over and over again is, it turns out, a crucial element of the responsible traveller's social skills.

(I am pretty fluent in Italian and turtles haven't come up in conversation even once?)

[crescenthistory]

SCREAMS this is giving me Reggie vibes instead of Barty I must be honest

https://www.tumblr.com/crescenthistory/764096096150700032/i-have-a-thought-academic-rivals-who-become

SCREAMING BACK yes unfortunately reggie works the best

while i personally view barty as an academic weapon who will compete with you to get a rise out of you, he also is too chaotic for the tension this requires. reggie is tension personified. he's perfect!