Green sea turtles are not like their ocean dwelling turtle cousins, as they only really eat seagrasses and algae, making them true to the term “you are what you eat” as that’s why they have their green shell and skin!
Baby sea turtles genders are determined by how cool or warm the sand in their nest is, so for boy turtles the sand will be cool, for girls it will be warmer and if the temperature fluctuates they will be mixed genders. How cool!
Turtles aren’t silent, they make a range of noises, anything from chicken-like clucks to dog-like barking, depending on the species.
Turtles lose their first “baby tooth” within an hour. Baby turtles, called hatchlings, have an “egg tooth” on their beak to help them hatch out of their shell. This tooth disappears approximately an hour after hatching.
The first few years of a marine turtle’s life are known as the ‘lost years’. That’s because the time between when the hatchlings emerge until they return to coastal shallow waters to forage is incredibly difficult to study. The lost years they spend at sea – which can be up to 20 years – largely remain a mystery to us.
