- The first turtles are thought to have (slowly) roamed the earth 215 million years ago, before lizards and snakes.
- Painted turtles spend the winter buried half a metre deep in the mud at the bot- tom of lakes and ponds. They breathe through gas-exchange sacs below their tails.
- Turtles play a key role in many aboriginal creation stories. According to Ojibwa legend, North America rests on the back of Maukinauk, the great turtle.
- Baby painted turtles often spend their first winter in a semi-frozen state, with their heart and breathing stopped.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a comic series, television show and movie in the 1980s and ‘90s, told the story of four turtles that evolved from sewer ooze and fought evil with martial arts. It was inexplicably popular.
- Courting wood turtles dance side to side for up to two hours before making things official.
- According to the book Up North, the Soviets sent the first spaceturtles around the moon in 1971.
- Snapping turtles can live to be 90 years old.
- An overturned turtle can lever itself back upright with its neck.
- Since turtles can’t expand their ribcages, in order to breathe when out of water they use an air pump to draw in air.
- Four of Canada’s 15 species of turtles are listed as endan- gered under the federal Species at Risk Act.
- Nestlé Turtles blend caramel, pecans and cashews inside a milk chocolate shell. Each turtle contains 90 calories— enough energy to paddle a canoe for about 20 minutes.
- A group of turtles is called a bale. No deaths have ever been attributed to stampeding bales.
- A turtle’s shell, just like a geo- desic tent, gains much of its strength from its dome-like shape.
- Californian pop-rock band The Turtles were originally called Crossfires from the Planet Mars. They crawled to the top of the Billboard charts in 1967 with the single “Happy Together,” dislodging a song called “Penny Lane” by another band known for its hard shell.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.
