Turtles like to spend a lot of time underwater, some species actually seem to spend their entire life underwater, so this made me wonder how do they do it, do they have gills? So I decided to do some research to find out, this is what I discovered.
Turtles don’t have gills, instead, they have a cloaca that acts in a similar way. The cloaca is a gill-like structure that is able to absorb the oxygen in the water. But unlike gills, they aren’t able to provide all the oxygen a turtle needs.
So turtles use the cloaca to get oxygen underwater, but what exactly is a cloaca?
Cloaca
A cloaca is a small orifice that can usually be found at the back end of an animal, and it has many different roles depending on the species of the animal.
You might have heard at some point something like: turtles are able to breathe through their butts. And as weird as it sounds that is kind of true, the cloaca is positioned near the turtle tail and it can be considered the butt of the turtle. But the cloaca acts differently than how you would normally expect a “back end” to work, let’s take for example another animal that we all know, the dog. The purpose of a dog’s anus is to execrate, and that is it, it’s not involved in any other biological processes. But the cloaca is used for more than that.
The cloaca has 4 important roles: execration, urination, reproduction, and breathing. Turtles use only one orifice for those things and that is the cloaca.
The cloaca can be found in other animals as well, they are not exclusive to turtles. Most birds have a cloaca, some fishes, and a few mammals. The cloaca can be a little different for other animals, but those that have it will generally use it for the same purpose, with the exception of breathing, not too many animals that have a cloaca use it for breathing, mainly because they don’t have any reason to do it.
For turtles, the cloaca consists of the Urodeum, the central part of the cloaca that receives urine from the ureter, Proctodeum, the back ectodermal part of an alimentary canal, and the Coprodeum.
Cloacas are also used to lay eggs, when turtles lay their eggs, they expel them through the cloaca.
If you own an aquatic turtle and you want to see your turtle using its cloaca to breathe, you can easily do so. Just look at the back end of the turtle when it’s swimming around, if you spend 15 minutes looking you have pretty big chances of seeing it in action.
Now let’s take a closer look at how turtles usually breathe and how and why they breathe through the cloaca.
How turtles breathe
The main way a turtle breaths it’s through its nose, all turtles have two small holes on their face that act as any normal nose would, when it comes to breathing, and of course they have two lungs where the air is transported. Until now there is nothing different in the way a turtle is breathing than the way you and I are breathing, they inhale air into their lungs and then exhale it, but the way things work on the inside is completely different. When you inhale air you can observe that your chest becomes smaller and when you exhale it becomes bigger, this happens because you have flexible ribs, turtles on the other hand have a shell that is not flexible at all. Since turtles don’t have this flexibility they have no use for the lung and muscle setup that we and most mammals have. Instead, turtles have muscles that pull the body outwards, towards the openings of the shell, to allow it to inhale, and more muscles to squish the turtle’s guts against its lungs to make it exhale.
The cloaca works in a similar way to the lungs, when the turtle is inside the water the cloaca will act like a pump that will suck water inside and after it gathers all the oxygen from it, it will expel the water out, and then it will start over. Due to the way things are arranged on the inside of the turtle this process is less exhausting than normal breathing.
Even if using the cloaca is less exhausting for the turtle, in normal circumstances a turtle won’t be able to survive for long periods of time using only the cloaca.
Some turtle species like the Olive ridley sea turtle can stay almost 10 hours submerged underwater, and the air that they get through the cloaca is essential for that. Not all turtles that use their cloaca for breathing are able to achieve such long periods underwater, but they are able to spend a lot more time than they would have without the cloaca.
Depending on their natural habitat different turtle species are able to get more air through their cloaca than other species, and this is to be expected. Sea turtles use it all the time since some of them spend their entire life without leaving the water. Aquatic turtles on the other hand still spend a fair amount of time on land as well. And land turtles that don’t spend any time underwater have little to no use for the breathing abilities of the cloaca.
But the cloaca is not only there to provide turtles with some extra air when they are swimming, without a cloaca most turtles wouldn’t be able to survive the winter.
Hibernation
When winter comes most wild turtles will hibernate, this means that they will spend most of the cold season at the bottom of the lake where they won’t move until the temperature gets warmer.
Turtles manage to do this because they are able to slow down their metabolism and as a result, they use very little energy, so they are able to last for long periods of time without food. But what about oxygen, can turtles live without oxygen for months when they are hibernating?
No, while turtles won’t use as much oxygen when they are hibernating they will still need an oxygen source, this is the part where the cloaca becomes very important.
When the turtles hibernate the cloaca will still remain active and will gather oxygen from the water, and since the process to do so requires very little effort from the turtle very little energy is going to be used. Even if the oxygen gathered by the cloaca wouldn’t normally be enough for the turtle to survive under normal conditions, while it’s hibernating the oxygen gathered will be exactly what it needs to survive the winter.
Related questions
How long do turtles hibernate? Turtles don’t have a set amount of time that they plan to hibernate, instead, they go to hibernate when the weather gets too cold for them, and they get out of hibernation when the weather gets warmer.
How long can a turtle stay underwater? It depends on the turtle, most sea turtles will be able to go for at least 5 hours without breathing, most aquatic turtles should be able to stay underwater for at least 20-30 minutes, land turtles on the other hand are not very good at staying underwater so 1 minute is the average you can expect them to be able to stay underwater. Here is a list of average times a turtle can spend underwater:
- Box turtle – 1 – 2 minutes
- Desert tortoise – 1 – 2 minutes
- Snapping turtle – 20 – 30 minutes
- Red-eared slider – 20 – 30 minutes
- Map turtle – 20 – 30 minutes
- Green sea turtle – 7 – 10 hours
- Leatherback sea turtle – 7 – 10 hours
- Kemp’s ridley – 7 – 10 hours
- Olive ridley – 7 – 10 hours
Do turtles breathe when they hibernate? Yes, they do. But not through their noses like they normally do, instead they use the cloaca that is a gill-like structure that allows them to gather small quantities of oxygen when they are underwater.
Hello,
If you enjoy the content that we create, please consider saying a "Thank You!" by leaving a tip.
Every little bit can help us tremendously in continuing to create quality content that helps turtle and tortoise owners around the world.
We really appreciate the kindness and support that you show us!
I’ve read that snapping turtles can use extra-pulmonary respiration during winter hibernation? Is that accurate and what is extra-pulmonary respiration?
In this case extra-pulmonary respiration, means that turtles can use their cloaca to breath underwater while hibernating. Breathing through the cloaca uses little to no energy so they can easily do this while hibernating.