Turtles are semiaquatic animals, which means that they mostly live underwater, but they stile need air in order to survive. But since they spend so much time in water, it’s easy to assume that they have gills or something similar, but no. While underwater, turtles are actually holding their breath. So, this leads to the question, how long can turtles hold their breath?
On average, a turtle is able to hold its breath for 10 to 20 minutes. Sea turtles are able to hold their breath anywhere between 2 and 5 hours, depending on how active they are.
The more active a turtle is, whether it’s a sea turtle or a semiaquatic turtle, the more oxygen it will consume. So during a leisure swim, both types of turtles will be able to hold their breath for a lot longer than they would have been if there were chasing a fish.
But, one very important thing to know about turtles is that they are not only holding their breath underwater, they are also breathing oxygen, and they are doing it through their butt.
How Turtles Breath Underwater
The main way a turtle breathes it’s through its nose, all turtles have too 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 they 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 set-up 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.
At the back end of a turtle you will find its tail, and right under it, you will see a small hole, that hole is the cloaca, and while it functions like most back ends do, it can do something extra.
The cloaca works similarly 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.
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.
While overall the cloaca only provides just a little bit of oxygen for an active turtle, it can also allow a sleeping turtle to stay underwater for hours.
How Turtles Breath Underwater While Sleeping
Under normal circumstances, the amount of oxygen gathered by the cloaca is almost insignificant, but when turtles sleep their heart rate is reduced, as well as their overall body activity, which means that they don’t need as much oxygen in order to function properly. So the air from the cloaca is able to keep the turtle submerged for a few extra hours.
But at some point the cloaca won’t be able to keep up with the oxygen needs. And if that happens and the turtle is exhausted and wants to sleep some more, it will simply swim to the surface to fill its lungs with oxygen that it will go back underwater to sleep.
If you would like an in-depth look at how the cloaca functions, you can check out my article: Do Turtles Have Gills? (How Turtles Breathe Underwater), where I cover in more detail how it extracts oxygen from the water and what other functions it serves.
So a turtle that is only able to hold its breath for just 20 minutes, thanks to the cloaca it’s now able to stay for 4 or 5 hours underwater without any problem. And while this might seem impressive, the cloaca can do even more, it can allow most turtles to stay underwater for at least 3 months.
How Turtles Manage to Hold Their Breath for 3 Months
Turtles will usually sleep underwater for 2 to 3 months every year uninterrupted. And all this time they are basically holding their breath. There are two reasons why turtles do this, the first one is the lack of food, during the winter there are little to no insects that can be eaten and plants stop growing.
The second one is that turtles are reptiles, which means that they are cold-blooded animals. Cold-blooded animals are not able to generate body heat, and they rely on the surrounding temperature to heat their body. So turtles are very sensible to even the smallest change in temperature.
When the weather starts to get cold, the metabolism of a turtle will start to slow down. And as a result, their hearts will start to slow down, along with all other processes that happen in their bodies. This is similar to what happens when they normally sleep, but it’s even more extreme.
In general the heart of a turtle beats between 40 and 45 times per minute, when they hibernate they will slow down to around 10 beats per minute. This should give you an idea on how much they slow down during hibernation.
As a result of this slow down, they will need considerably less oxygen, and this gives the cloaca a real opportunity to shine. While the turtle is sleeping, the cloaca is able to provide enough oxygen to keep the turtle underwater for 3 or 4 hours, but when the turtle is hibernating the cloaca can provide oxygen for months. Most turtles have to hibernate for about 3 months each year, but there have been cases when they had to do it for 4 or 5 months, and during this time the cloaca managed to provide enough oxygen for the turtle to survive.
The fact that turtles don’t need to generate heat to warm their bodies is also very helpful during hibernation because, unlike mammals that hibernate, turtles don’t need to use energy to warm their bodies, which means that they need less oxygen. But this also means that they have to be very careful with the place where choose to hibernate.
Most semiaquatic turtles choose to hibernate at the bottom of a lake, but if they think that the lake is too shallow and will freeze completely, they will look for a hibernation spot on land. If a turtle is caught in ice, the cloaca won’t be able to provide oxygen and their internal organs will be damaged.
The same thing can happen outside the water as well, so most land turtles will look for a spot that will provide some cover during the winter, either inside a cave, or most commonly they will dig a hole in the ground and cover themselves with dirt. This will keep the freezing temperatures at bay.
Turtles are able to do all those amazing things because they reduce their metabolic rate. But reducing the metabolic rate can also have some unpleasant side effects. One of the bad things that happen is that they have a hard time getting rid of the lactic acid that accumulates. Lactic acid is the same thing that gives us muscle soreness, so you can imagine how unpleasant it can be for the turtle to wake up after a long sleep with muscle cramps all over its body.
To neutralize the lactic acid, turtles use magnesium and calcium that they’ve stored in their shells. If they didn’t do that, the lactic acid builds up would be too big, and they wouldn’t be able to wake up from hibernation at all.
The calcium and magnesium that they used would have helped them grow, but because getting rid of the lactic acid was more important, they had to use it for that. This is another bad side effect, turtles won’t be able to grow when they hibernate. And growing isn’t something superficial for turtles, it’s something that can save their lives. The bigger they get, the fewer predators will come after them.
Final Thoughts
So, if you want to get really technical, a turtle doesn’t really hold its breath as it continues to breathe through the cloaca. But if we ignore this small technical aspect. The average turtle that you will find in a lake or a river can hold its breath for about 10 minutes. While a sea turtle can on average hold its breath between 2 and 5 hours.
While sleeping, the cloaca really comes into effect and will increase the time spend underwater from 10 minutes to 4 hours. And in the case of sea turtles even longer.
And while hibernating, all turtles are able to spend months without having to get out for oxygen.
I hope this article answered all your questions about how long turtles can hold their breath. In case you have any questions you can leave them in the comment section below, my colleagues and I regularly check the comment and answer any question that we can find.
Related Questions
Can sea turtles drown? Yes, if sea turtles stay too long underwater, they can drown. But this only happens if they get caught by a net or something similar, otherwise there is no reason for a sea turtle to drown.
Do land turtles hibernate? Yes, some land turtles hibernate as well. Hibernating is not exclusive to land, sea, or aquatic turtles. It all depends on the environment that they live in, and if they choose to migrate or to stay.
Do turtles feel cold? Yes, turtles can feel cold. Turtles are cold-blooded, meaning that they don’t generate their own body heat, and they rely on the environmental heat to maintain their body temperature. And they have to be able to feel cold and heat to be able to choose a good spot to bask.
Do turtles have to hibernate? No, turtles hibernate only out of necessity. Hibernation serves no other purpose aside from keeping them alive during the winter. If there were no winter, turtles wouldn’t have to hibernate at all.
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