8 Amazing Facts About Sea Turtles Explained!

Ashley | 09 - 28 - 2023
Facts About Sea Turtles

Find facts about sea turtles and play a quiz to know if you have the right details with TriviaSharp now!

Interesting Facts About Sea Turtles

How Many Species of Sea Turtles Are There?

There are only 6.5 million sea turtles in the world categorized under seven species namely, Hawksbill, Loggerhead, Leatherback, Olive Ridley, Green, Flatback, and Kemp’s Ridley. All of them are at the verge of extinction. 

Sea Turtles Have Gills to Breathe Underwater
  • A. True
  • B. False

Can You Remove Sea Turtles from Their Shells?

This is one of the important facts you probably didn’t know about sea turtles. You cannot pull any turtle out its shell without injuring or killing it. Turtle and tortoise shells are attached to the rib cage and the spinal cord of the animal and are connected with blood vessels, tissues, and muscle. One more interesting fact about the sea turtles is, they cannot retract their head and flippers inside their shells when threatened. 

Weird Facts About Sea Turtles

Can Sea Turtles Drown?

Yes, turtles don’t have gills and survive in the ocean by holding their breath. Do you know that they can hold their breath for a min of 5 hours at a stretch? Thus, getting caught in fishnets and plastic waste underwater can become deadly.

How Do Sea Turtles Find Their Way?

Sea turtles travel the expanse of the earth by using an internal GPS system type mechanism that assesses the magnetic field of the earth. They use this information to migrate during seasonal changes and during the breeding season. 

Surprising Sea Turtle Facts

What Do Sea Turtles Eat?  

Depending on the species and age, sea turtles can be completely herbivores or carnivores while some are omnivores in nature. They like to hang near coral reefs, attack fish schools, and mow the ocean surface when hungry for snacks. Jellyfish are a delicacy on their usual diet.  

Why Do Sea Turtles Have Slow Metabolism?

Turtles have a slow metabolism and sea turtles are the slowest of them. The average sea turtle can live for more than 50 years and will mature only at 20 or 30 years. Though their lifespan is similar to human beings, the inability to retract their head makes them easy prey for killer whales and tiger sharks. 

Tremendous Turtle Facts

How Do Sea Turtles Reproduce?

Sea turtles copulate inside the ocean! Male turtles have claws on their flippers to hold onto the females while mating. Female turtles can store sperm for more than one mating cycle and many of them are monogamous in nature. While turtles mate only once, eggs will be laid in batches within an interval of a couple of weeks. 

Where Do Sea Turtles Lay Their Eggs?

The turtles lay around 100 eggs in a nest and create up to 6 to 7 nests in one season. (But only one to ten baby turtles can survive). These nests are deep sand dunes near shores. The infantile life of sea turtles is an absolute mystery to oceanographers who research these turtles. At present, they have concluded that temperature determines the gender of the eggs. Thus, all the eggs emerging out of a particular nest could be of the same gender creating a deficit for future reproductive cycles.

Read Next