All animals in the world have an important role in the environment that they live in. So I wondered why are turtles important, at first glance they don’t seem to do too much, but after I did some research I was completely amazed about the important role that turtles have in the entire ecosystem. So I decided to write this article to share the results of my research with you.
Why are turtles important? Turtles are important for many reasons, they are an important part of the food chain, some species even change the landscape of certain environments, and they act as sentinels of environmental quality among many other things.
Turtles have many roles in the wild, some of them are easily observed by everybody, and some of them are more subtle but are still very important. Since turtles live in almost every known environment they are basically influencing the whole world. In the rest of the article, I am going to tell you about some of the most important ways turtles influence the world, and why they are important.
I am going to split this article into two sections, one about freshwater and land turtles, and the other part about sea turtles. I decided to do so because the roles that they play are slightly different due to the environments that they live in. And then I am going to talk about their importance in religion, mythology, and in our everyday lives.
Freshwater and Land Turtles
The Role that Turtles Have in the Food Chain
Turtles have a very important role in the food chain, both as predators and prey, and as scavengers.
Even if turtles are not the most fearsome predators they are still predators, like most animals that eat meat. Turtles, like most small animals, won’t attack bigger animals than them but they will eat a lot of small insects, worms, fishes, ducks, and on occasions other birds. Insects are easy to catch and they are plentiful so turtles will try to eat them every chance they get. Fishes are also one of their favorite meals, they are harder to catch but they will take every chance they get to catch one.
And I’ve also mentioned birds, normally you wouldn’t see a turtle try to run after a bird, but there is a turtle species called Helmeted turtles that will work together to catch them. The important thing that turtles do when they act as predators are that they help to keep the populations of their prey under control.
There are a lot of lakes that would be overcrowded with fishes or ducks if there weren’t any turtles. The same thing applies to the insects that they eat, without turtles they would overrun the place, and they would cause a lot of damage to the vegetation and probably to a lot of animals as well.
Maybe turtles aren’t the only ones that keep those populations under control, but they are definitely an important part, and without them, some areas would definitely be overpopulated.
The role that turtles play as a prayer is very simple but important. There are a lot of animals that eat turtles: Raccoons, Opossums, Skunks, Crows, Seagulls, Snakes, Crocodiles, and Alligators, just to name a few.
Basically, any meat-eating animal that lives in the same area as turtles will eat one at some point. There are no animals that feed exclusively on turtles but it turtles were to disappear from a certain area, that area would go through drastic changes.
Because one important food source will disappear, the animals that used to eat turtles will have to start eating another animal instead of turtles, and the population of that other animal would start to suffer drastically, and it could even go extinct. Let me give you a short example of how that would work out:
Let’s say that near a lake live turtles, ducks, rabbits, and foxes. The predators, in this case, would be the foxes and they would eat turtles, ducks, and rabbits. When the foxes eat from all three populations of the ecosystem is in perfect balance. If the turtles suddenly disappear then the foxes would have no other option than to eat more from another species, and by doing so the populations of the rabbits and the ducks will slowly start to do decline over time until they also disappear. At this point, the foxes will have only three options, start moving to another place where they can find food, starve until they disappear, or start eating other foxes. All of those options are bad, if they move to another place they will upset the balance of that place and the same thing will happen as it did in the original place where we started, and the other two options will lead to their disappearance.
The example is oversimplified, but in real life things like this can happen if one species, like the turtles, is removed. In reality, things will move at a slower pace, you will need at least 20-30 years to notice a change and no animal species will disappear overnight. But there are a lot of places that suffered great changes because one species disappears.
Turtles are also scavengers, this means that they will eat dead animals that they find. They won’t eat something that is rotten, but if the meat is still fresh they will gladly do it. In fact, a lot of the meat that they eat in the wild is from scavenging, as you know turtles are not the fastest animal, and the insects that they manage to catch are not very meaty.
So a fish that is laying on the ground could be the equivalent of the meat that they managed to get from insects in an entire week. The reason why this is important is this: if the animals would start to rot they will populate the area and would create a lot of bacteria that could infect the animals that live there. If turtles wouldn’t eat them before this could happen we would definitely have more sick animals.
One other important thing that turtles do in the food chain is that they eat a lot of plants, a lot of turtles even eat more vegetation than meat. You might be thinking that a lot of animals eat plants so turtles can’t be that special, but they are.
Unlike most animals turtles are able to spend long periods of time underwater, where they are able to eat aquatic plants. Without turtles a lot of lakes would be overrun by vegetation and fishes wouldn’t wave enough space to extend their population. Turtles also eat a lot of vegetation while they are on land, but the biggest impact that they have is in the water since there aren’t many animals that can eat the aquatic vegetation.
The Way Turtles Influence the Landscape
A lot of people don’t know this about turtles but they like to dig. A lot of turtle species dig burrows. They dig those burrows so that they have a safe place to hide, to sleep, or to hide their eggs.
One good example of a turtle that does this is the gopher tortoise that lives in the southeastern United States, this tortoise digs long, deep underground burrows that they use only for short periods of time, after they are done with it they will live it behind and a lot of animals will use it for refuge when they are hiding from predators, and even as homes.
So even if turtles don’t influence the landscape in a drastic and visible way, they are still doing it, and it’s very important for a lot of small animals that find homes in their burrows.
How Turtles Act as Sentinels of Environmental Quality
In some habitats, especially large rivers, and lakes, turtles serve as sentinels of the environmental quality. A lot of biologists are able to tell the condition of the environment by studying the turtles that live there. By studying the health of the turtles, their regional abundance, and overall biodiversity, biologists are able to get a good idea of the situation of the environment that they live in.
If the turtles are in good health, they have a healthy population number, and there are multiple species then it means that everything is going well in the respective environment. But for example, if their numbers are alarmingly low then it means that something bad is happening in the area.
By analyzing the turtles and the data more carefully the biologist are able to determine what the source of the problem could be, or at least this will point them in the right direction.
Sea Turtles
The Role that Turtles Have in the Food Chain
Sea turtles have a very important role in the food chain. Due to the role that they play in the food chain of the oceans they are actually considered a keystone species, this means that the entire ocean is affected in a very positive way by them.
Their role as prey is similar to that of freshwater turtles, and if they were to go extinct a lot of marine species will suffer. Since the oceans are vast and there is a lot about them that we don’t know there aren’t too many details that we can go into. But we still know that a lot of coastal birds would suffer since they eat a lot of baby turtles and turtle eggs
One of the most important roles turtles have in the food chain is as predators, sea turtles are the biggest jellyfish eaters in the oceans. Without sea turtles, the jellyfish population would go completely out of control. Jellyfishes might seem harmless but they actually eat a lot of fish larvas, and if their population were to grow then they will eat a lot more fish larvas, and this will affect the fish population, and after enough time there would be nearly no fishes left in the ocean.
Sea turtles, especially green sea turtles, are one of the few animals that eat seagrass. Seagrass has a lot of benefits for the water in the oceans and for the many species that live there, and just like normal grass it needs to occasionally be cut to maintain its health.
When turtles eat the seagrass they don’t bite it off completely, they live the roots behind, as well as small bits, so when they eat it they are basically cutting the seagrass. With the decline of sea turtles, there has also been noticed a decline in seagrass beds.
Seagrass beds are large spots on the ocean floor that are filled with seagrass, those beds provide great places for fishes to breed and develop. If those fishes don’t have a place where they can breed and develop it will be a big problem for humans as well, since a lot of those fishes are caught for consumption.
Sea turtles, especially hawksbill sea turtles, turtles are also one of the very few species that are able to eat sea sponges. The physical structure and chemical composition of sea sponges prevent most sea creatures from eating them. But hawksbill turtles have beak-like mouths that they use to rip the sponges apart when they eat them.
By doing this they remove the sponges from the area and allow other species, like coral to take their place. If the turtles wouldn’t remove the sponges they would remain there forever and coral would have no place to grow, and as a result sea sponges would dominate the sea. Another important thing that they do when they bite the sea sponges is that they leave small bits behind that are eaten by smaller fish and other small sea animals.
Sea turtles carry a lot of barnacles, algae, and other similar organisms on their shells. Those organisms on their shells are a food source for a lot of smaller fishes and other animals that live in the ocean. Sea turtles will gladly let other animals eat the algae off their shells. It is very common to see schools of fishes feeding on the algae and barnacles from the shells. Turtles also benefit from this because their shells get clean and this will reduce drag when they are swimming.
The Way Turtles Influence the Landscape
As you’ve already noticed turtles influence the landscape a lot by just eating, but things don’t stop there.
Sea turtles are one of the very few species in the world that help the vegetation on dunes and beaches to grow. When nesting season comes turtles will go on the shore, on beaches, and on dunes, dig holes in the ground, and lay their eggs.
During one nesting season, a turtle will lay hundreds of eggs. Not all of those eggs will hatch and a lot of them will remain buried underground. Those remains will act as nutrition sources for the vegetation that grows on the beaches and on dunes.
If turtles wouldn’t lay their eggs the vegetation will grow weaker and as a result, plants wouldn’t be able to hold the sand together and there will be a lot of erosions on beaches.
Turtles also influence the landscape of beaches indirectly. Since turtles always return to lay their eggs on the beach that they were born, those beaches become points of interest for tourists and for animal organizations. So people will try to maintain the beach as natural as possible, while the surrounding area will get more developed since there will be a lot of tourists that will come to see the turtles.
The Importance of Turtles in Religion and Mythology
Turtles have historically played rich and important roles in mythology and religion in many parts of the world.
One of the most important roles that turtles have been given is that of the carrier of the world and universe. There are several complex myths in the Chinese, Japanese, Mayan, and North American cultures that place a turtle in that role. Most of those myths are very similar, there are a lot of variations to it, based on the location where it originated, but a turtle always maintains the same role, that of the carrier of the world, and even the universe in some cases.
In various religions, turtles have been considered companions and advisors of the gods. And in some cases, they were seen as gods themselves.
One of the best-known and advanced ancient civilizations, the Mayans, worshiped turtles. There have been different wall carvings that depicted turtles, and there is also one temple in Uxmal, Mexico that is dedicated to turtles. The Mayan civilization was a very religious civilization and they were also very good at math, for them the number 13 was sacred, and the fact that the turtles that lived near them had 13 scutes made them even more important to Mayans.
There are also some beliefs about turtles that are a bit strange. Some places in Japan and possibly in China had the belief that all turtles were female, and if a turtle wanted to mate she would have to do so with a snake.
Another interesting piece of Chinese turtle lore provides one possible explanation on how they came to have their written language of symbols. There was a special ritual where a priest would burn the shell of a turtle and then read the symbols that emerged on the cracked shell. Some Chinese commentators claim that this is how the Chinese written symbol language was born.
The Mongolians are another group that believed that the world rests on the back of a turtle and that turtles represent immortality, as a result of those beliefs they placed their graves in a turtle-shaped arrangement.
Early Buddhists also held turtles in very high regard, they considered them souls that waited to be reincarnated and that they should never be hurt because you were hurting a soul.
There are a lot of myths and legends about turtles out there, some of them might seem a little strange or funny now, some of them are very complex, but all of them place turtles in a positive light. Most ancient religions considered turtles to be very old and wise creatures, and very often they are carrying the earth on their backs, or at least they had a role in its creation.
The Importance of Turtles in Our Everyday Lives and Culture
Today turtles are very present in our everyday lives, I would actually say that they are so present that we don’t even notice because we are used to seeing them there.
One of the first things that come into mind when I think about how turtles are present in our daily lives is TMNT, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Most of us have probably seen one of the cartoons when we were little, or one of the many live adaptation series, or movies, or read a comic book about them, or even played one of the many video games. There are a lot of movies and cartoons about animals, but there are very few that are as successful and long-lasting as this series. So we can easily say that turtles offered us a great source of entertainment in the form of TMNT.
There are a lot of cartoons and animated movies that have a turtle as a character, for example, Finding Nemo, Looney Tunes, Kung Fu Panda, Rocko’s Modern Life, Franklin, Rango, etc. All the characters that are in those animations, including turtles, have the power to influence people a little, even if it’s just for the duration of the movie, they can make you feel sad or happy, and sometimes they can make see things in your life in a completely different way.
The American band Red Hot Chili Peppers have a song where they use lines from Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle.
Turtles are also featured on currency, they make an appearance on the 2 Brazilian real bills. And they are also featured on a coin in Malaysia.
There is also the old story about the race between the turtle and the hare. This story is usually used to prove the point that slow and steady wins the race. And I am sure that everybody has heard that story at some point.
Turtles also play and have played a very important role in literature. Aristotle, who lived between 384 and 322 BC, mentioned sea turtles in his book Historia Animalia. William Shakespeare wrote the allegorical poem “The Phoenix and the Turtle”. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is a book written by J. R. R. Tolkien, where a turtle plays a notable role. Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories written by Dr. Seuss is a book that focuses on turtles. Stephen King has created the turtle Maturin that plays an important role in the lore of his books. There are a lot of famous writers that used turtles in their writings, as main or secondary characters, or as a subject of study. Today turtles are still appearing in fiction books, comic books, and books that study turtles.
Turtles are also a very popular design choice. There are a lot of clothes that feature turtles on them, or that have a shell-like design. Turtles are also very popular when it comes to jewelry, there are a lot of turtle-shaped necklaces, rings, and earrings.
Turtles have always been a very important food source for some parts of the world. Without turtles, a lot of people would have starved. In recent years people have been a lot more conservative with turtles as a food source, but a couple of hundreds of years ago people couldn’t afford to care too much about other species and turtles were a great food source. Unfortunately, this has affected some turtle species in a very bad way, but the good thing is that now people are in general more aware of problems like this and are trying to do their best to help them.
And let’s not forget that turtles can greatly influence us when they are our pets. Taking care of a turtle is a big responsibility, not because it’s hard but because somebody else is depending on you. Over time this can make you a more responsible and organized person.
Conclusion
Turtles are considered to be a keystone species of this planet, they influence so many things in this world, that it’s hard to imagine how different life would be without them. Turtle are and have been, a very important part of our lives, and they are probably still going to remain so.
I hope that now you have a better understanding of the importance of turtles, and how they influence us, our culture, and the entire world. If you have any questions about turtles you should leave them in the comment section and I will answer them as soon as possible. Or if you know another reason why turtles are important that I haven’t mentioned, then please share it with us.
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