Cartoons often suggest turtles wear shells like removable armor. Those stories show turtles stepping out, swapping shells, or treating them like clothing. Biology disagrees. A turtle shell is not an ...

Narrator: A turtle's shell is as much a part of its body as our rib cage is of ours. In fact, it is their rib cage, and their spine, and their vertebrae, and their sternum. Basically, a turtle's ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The broad-shelled river turtle (Chelodina expansa) falls into a group known as side-neck turtles.

Turtles have shells that they can hide inside of when they feel like they’re in danger or when they are feeling anti-social and want everything around them to disappear. On the other hand, do turtles ...

A turtle’s shell makes for a great portable home, offering a huge amount of protection to the animal living inside. But this carapace is nothing more than an evolutionary byproduct of another ...

In cartoons, when a turtle is spooked, it retreats into and closes up its shell. While used for comic effect, this imagery is based in fact – although not all turtles are capable of this protective ...

"They show now how developmental steps [in the turtle] could have led to this initial formation" of the turtle's shell. In addition to the overt peculiarity of the turtle's shell, or carapace -- which ...

Reporting from San Diego — Just in time for the holidays, a loggerhead sea turtle at Birch Aquarium in La Jolla got a perfectly fitting gift. The turtle, rescued in 2013 with a broken shell and ...

It's a long-held idea that turtles can tuck their heads into their shells when threatened. But is it true? And is this protective trick why turtles the world over have shells today? The answer is that ...