the.com/turtle
A reptile that packs its own house and outlives every landlord it ever meets.
means A slow-moving reptile with a bony shell enclosing its body, found on land and in water (and, in many dialects, used loosely for tortoises and terrapins too).
from From the French 'tortue,' the name for these shelled reptiles. English speakers seem to have reshaped 'tortue' into 'turtle' — likely by leaning on the familiar bird-name 'turtle' as in 'turtledove,' which is unrelated and comes from Latin 'turtur,' an imitation of the bird's cooing call. So two very different creatures collided in one word: the cooing dove and the plodding reptile, joined by nothing but the accident of sound.
- breathing
- Some species breathe through their butts underwater
- age
- Can live over 150 years easily
- spine fused
- Shell is literally fused ribs and vertebrae
- older than
- Predates dinosaurs by millions of years
- sex by heat
- Egg temperature decides if it's male or female
archelon — extinct sea turtle, 15 feet long, cretaceous period 66-100 million years ago
leatherback sea turtle — largest living turtle species, weighs up to 2,000 lbs, dives 4,000+ feet deep