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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey

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Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, at some point, let's just

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Speaker 1: say around two hundred and sixty million years ago, Earth

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Speaker 1: got turtles. They look strange in these our modern mammalion times,

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Speaker 1: when lots of things are squishy and unarmored, But during

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Speaker 1: the Late Permian epoch, those early turtles were dressed in

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Speaker 1: all the latest fashions, short sturdy legs, bony plates, and

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Speaker 1: a stiff splayed crawling strut. Shortly after turtles made their

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Speaker 1: evolutionary arrival, a fairly standard Earth thing happened a mass

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Speaker 1: extinction event. Although mass extinctions have happened with some regularity

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Speaker 1: on our planet, this one was a doozy, and it

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Speaker 1: wiped out almost all of the life in the oceans

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Speaker 1: and over two thirds of the vertebrates on land. The

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Speaker 1: things that survived had to have been pretty good at survival,

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Speaker 1: and it turns out turtles were. But we spoke about

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Speaker 1: email with Laura Smith, a research scientists who specializes in

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Speaker 1: herpetology at the Jones Center at ITUA, which is an

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Speaker 1: organization in Newton, Georgia that promotes excellence and natural resource

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Speaker 1: management and conservation. She said, turtles have a really successful

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Speaker 1: body form that hasn't changed all that much over time.

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Speaker 1: They've retained the primitive shell, which is a really protective,

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Speaker 1: safe body design. Also, turtles live in a lot of

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Speaker 1: different habitats. They're aquatic and also terrestrial, so living in

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Speaker 1: a lot of different habitats has allowed them to persist.

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Speaker 1: So well, what's the difference between tortoises and turtles. All

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Speaker 1: of the animals alive today that protect themselves with a shell,

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Speaker 1: which is basically just a modified rib cage, are in

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Speaker 1: the order test studinies. Collectively, we call this group of

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Speaker 1: animals turtles, but individually we might call them different things

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Speaker 1: based on where they live and some morphological and physiological traits.

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Speaker 1: Hortoises are a group that are generally always found on land.

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Speaker 1: Smith said, they say that not all turtles are tortoises,

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Speaker 1: but all tortoises are turtles. The turtles are organisms with

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Speaker 1: a shell which might be in water or might be

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Speaker 1: on land. A tortoise is a type of turtle. In general,

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Speaker 1: both turtles and tortoises, as well as other reptiles, lay

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Speaker 1: their eggs on land. It's what makes them different from amphibians,

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Speaker 1: which need water for egg laying and at least part

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Speaker 1: of their life cycle. Because tortoises are a type of turtle,

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Speaker 1: it's difficult to lay down hard and fast rules about

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Speaker 1: what makes something tortoises rather than turtle ish. But in general,

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Speaker 1: tortoises are always found on land, whereas turtles can be

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Speaker 1: found in aquatic or marine habitats as well as land.

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Speaker 1: Smith said turtles and tortoises look different because of where

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Speaker 1: they live. A sea turtle is only found in the ocean.

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Speaker 1: The females are the only ones that come on land,

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Speaker 1: and that's just to lay eggs. They have four legs,

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Speaker 1: but the front legs are almost like wings or paddles.

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Speaker 1: They're not great for moving around on land at all

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Speaker 1: because they're adapted for swimming quickly. Their shells have a low,

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Speaker 1: flat profile for cutting through the water. Compare that to

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Speaker 1: a Galapa ghost tortoise, for example, whose body can weigh

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Speaker 1: up to nine d and twenty pounds that's almost four

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Speaker 1: d and twenty kilos. With stocky, elefantine legs, a high

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Speaker 1: domed shell, and big scales on their exposed skin to

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Speaker 1: protect them from predators, they wouldn't last long in the ocean,

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Speaker 1: but luckily they don't have to. The Smith said, for

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Speaker 1: the most part, there's not really one characteristic that tells

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Speaker 1: you whether something is a tortoise or a turtle. But

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Speaker 1: it's pretty clear. If you see a little turtle on

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Speaker 1: the side of the road and it has a sort

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Speaker 1: of flattened shell profile, webbed feet in the back, smooth skin,

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Speaker 1: and some brighter colors, that's going to be a turtle.

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Speaker 1: The tortoises have a heavier, more domed shell and subdued colors.

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Speaker 1: As usual, the terminology can be confusing. Box turtles, for instance,

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Speaker 1: which are widespread in the United States in Central America

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Speaker 1: and don't really swim or spend much time in the water,

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Speaker 1: but they're still considered turtles rather than tortoises. And then

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Speaker 1: there are the terrapins, which is the name given to

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Speaker 1: aquatic turtles in the United Kingdom. In the US, aquatic

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Speaker 1: turtles are just called turtles, with the exception of the

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Speaker 1: diamond back terrapin, which lives in brackish water in tidal

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Speaker 1: marshes in the eastern United States. Both tortoises and turtles

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Speaker 1: have made themselves at home on this planet. We find

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Speaker 1: both on every continent other than Antarctica. With one exception,

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Speaker 1: there are no tortoise species native to Australia. Smith said

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Speaker 1: the greatest diversity of aquatic turtles are in Southeast Asia

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Speaker 1: and in the southeastern United States. The greatest tortoise bio

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Speaker 1: diversity is in South Africa. And there used to be

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Speaker 1: more giant tortoises across the world, but now there are

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Speaker 1: just remnants on the Galapagos and Aldebra places like that.

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Speaker 1: Giant tortoises do occasionally disperse, or more likely drift across oceans,

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Speaker 1: basically by surviving for weeks or months bobbing around. In

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Speaker 1: recent years, an aldebrand tortoise with barnacles on its shell

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Speaker 1: washed up in East Africa, and that's not bad for

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Speaker 1: something that started its life in the Indian Ocean. Today's

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Speaker 1: episode was written by Jesceline Shields and produced by Tyler Clang.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other curious topics,

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Speaker 1: is it has to Works dot Com brainstuff this production

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