Turtles may not be jumpy and vibrant like most pets, but they have a range of fantastic attributes and a handful of strange elements too. Some peculiar things about turtles include being born with a baby tooth, eating their poop, and breathing through their butts.
Can a Turtle Poop With its Mouth?
Turtles don’t pass their fecal matter through their mouth. Instead, turtles pass poop through a unique orifice known as the cloaca. This is an ultimately helpful organ located at the base of the tail that performs various functions.
Besides defecating, the cloaca also plays other essential roles in a turtle’s body, including laying eggs, breathing, urinating, and reproduction. Turtles are not the only animal with a cloaca; some fishes, birds, and a few mammals have it. However, it performs all the other functions besides breathing in the rest of the animals.
The cloaca in turtles boasts three distinct parts that collect excretions from the urinary tract, digestive tract, and genital tract. The Proctodeum receives excrete from the alimentary canal, the Urodeum urine from the ureter, and the Coprodeum acts as the reproductive part.
The thought that turtles pass their stool from the mouth is null and void.
Why People Think That Turtles Can Excrete Wastes Through Their Mouth?
Pooping through their mouth is not an uncommon thing. Animals such as jellyfish, sea anemones, and sea sponges lack an anus and use their mouths for eating and pooping. However, that’s not enough reason to make someone think that turtles could also do the same.
The notion that turtles can poop through their mouth didn’t span out of anywhere. It started to spread when researchers confirmed that the Chinese Soft-shelled Turtles (Pelodiscus sinensis) could expel pee from their mouths. Essentially, when Chinese Soft-shelled Turtles need to urinate, they approach the whole process a little differently.
The creature goes looking for a puddle and dips its head under for several minutes excreting urea via the mouth. Researchers placed the turtles in a dry box and provided a pool where they could be seen dipping their heads into the water for more than one and a half hours. During this time, they would excrete urea through the mouth.
Researchers wanted to investigate how much urea these creatures could excrete through the mouth. They took a sample of the urine passed from the mouth and another from the rear side. They were shocked to find out that excrete from the mouth had 50 times more urea than the urine that came through the rear. Since the Chinese Soft-Shelled Turtles live in marshes and swamps with salty and brackish water, passing urea through the mouth helps them survive in such conditions.
While the Chinese Soft-shelled Turtles are the basis for the notion that all the other turtles could poop through their mouths, that’s a fallacy.
How Do Turtles Defecate?
As mentioned earlier, turtles have a tiny organ at the base of the tail known as the cloaca. They pass excrete through this orifice. However, you need to grasp a few things about turtles. In the same way, they enjoy eating when fully submerged in water; they also prefer pooping in the water.
The presence of water facilitates bowel movement and makes the pooping process less strenuous. Conversely, pooping in the water might be an instinctive behavior that turtles pick in the wild to help keep their environment clean.
Turtles carry the Salmonella germs, which can be spread through their droppings. By defecating in water, they help keep the bacteria from human beings and other terrestrial animals that can be affected by it. However, when brought into captivity, turtles usually cause a real mess, and you have to keep changing the water and cleaning the tank to maintain proper hygiene.
Do Turtles Poop Immediately After Eating?
Although the time a turtle takes to poop after eating differs from one turtle to the next, most turtle owners claim that turtles take anywhere between 5 minutes and 1 hour. However, hatchlings and young turtles pass their stool almost immediately after eating.
Tracking your turtle’s pooping schedule is essential as it allows you to know when to change the water and clean the turtle tank. Some turtle owners minimize the cleaning by feeding their pet turtles in a separate tank. They then allow the turtle to stay in the new container until they’re done pooping. This ensures that the water in the main tank stays clean.
How Often Should a Turtle Poop?
The frequency of pooping in turtles differs with age. Usually, hatchlings and baby turtles poop more frequently than adults. Essentially, young turtles should defecate every day. If A young turtle fails to pass stool in more than a day, this might indicate that there’s a problem.
However, turtles measuring more than 4 inches (10cm) long defecate less frequently. Essentially, they should do their business every 3 to 4 days. If such a turtle poops every day or stays for a week without passing stool, this signals something wrong.
While these are the standard guidelines for an average turtle, they might differ from one animal to another. You must keep an eye on your turtle’s bowel movement to learn its pooping habits and know when there is a problem.
If your pet turtle is experiencing bowel movement too often or it’s not pooping normally, consult your turtle vet. These professionals will diagnose the problem and advise you accordingly.
How Should a Healthy Poop Look Like?
The color, shape, texture, and consistency of turtle’s dropping depend on various factors, primarily the diet and habitat. For turtles that eat lots of plant-based food, the droppings can have pieces of husks and seem more fibrous. Healthy turtles should excrete their fecal matter in pellet form or log-like shapes.
The size and magnitude of the poop will depend on the size of the turtle and the amount of food it has eaten. Whether the feces are tacky or dry will depend on the diet and habitat. Aquatic turtles are more likely to consume wet foods than terrestrial turtles. For this reason, the former will poop tackier stool than the latter.
Generally, the turtle’s poop should have greenish-brown and white color or both. For turtles that live in the water, their poop is brown to greenish-brown. However, for turtles that live on land, such as the American Box Turtle, the poop usually has a white component.
However, turtle feces that are not brown or greenish-brown could indicate health complications.
White Poop
Terrestrial turtles will at times excrete feces with white pigmentation due to the presence of uric acid. Unlike mammals that boast urea in their urine, terrestrial turtles’ urine has uric acid. When the uric acid solidifies, it forms a white compound known as urate.
Essentially, when you see your turtle releasing white poop, this means that there’s uric acid that solidified into urate in the cloaca or bladder. Since turtles on land produce uric acid to adapt to the drier environment, it’s much less in the aquatic turtles’ urine. Therefore, you’ll never see an aquatic turtle excreting white poop.
Nevertheless, if your turtle consistently excretes white poop, it might indicate an irregular increase in uric acid production. This may be caused by excessive consumption of protein. However, it’s best to consult your vet to diagnose the problem and recommend treatment.
Black poop
If your turtle excretes black or dark poop, this might indicate that there’s internal bleeding. This might be caused by blockages and internal cuts in the digestive system. While you can monitor a turtle that’s defecating white droppings for some time, you need to seek immediate professional help if you detect that they are releasing black poop. Internal blockages and cuts can be fatal if not treated immediately.
Other Changes in Poop that May Indicate a Problem
Pet turtle owners should also look for other signs that may point to an existing condition. Here are some common things you should look for in turtle’s excretes and what they indicate.
- If your young turtle, go for days without pooping or an adult for more than a week, this may be due to constipation.
- When your turtle starts to diarrhea, it is due to a low-fiber diet.
- If a turtle excretes white, string-like spaghetti or small white objects, this is an indication that they may be having parasites in their alimentary canal.
- If a turtle suffers from extreme diarrhea, this may be a protozoan infection.
Do Turtles Eat Their Poop?
Another bizarre thing about turtles is that they can savor their poop, older turtle’s feces, and even fish’s excretes. This is referred to as coprophagy, and it’s usually attributed to turtles trying to salvage healthy bacteria and nutrients remaining in the poop.
This practice might seem peculiar, but it’s something that has been witnessed before in the animal kingdom. Usually, young turtles wait for older turtles to defecate and eat their poop in search of symbiotic bacteria, which plays a pivotal role in their bodies. The disgusting behavior is typical in the wild, where the mantra survival for the fittest takes center stage.
It’s not easy to find turtles raised in captivity with coprophagy since they are fully nourished with all the essential nutrients that they require. However, this is not a guarantee that this will never happen. Therefore, observing your pet turtle during poo time is crucial.
However, the most viable and practical solution to ensure that your turtles don’t eat their poop is to invest in a good filter. With a turtle filter in place, the turtle’s dropping will be dispersed before they think of consuming them.
The filter boasts three customizable media baskets to help remove urea and nitrates from the tank. It eliminates the turtle poop before the reptile gets hungry and thinks of forging on its fecal matter.
Do Turtles Fart?
Most turtle owners claim to have seen bubbles floating in the turtle tank from the rear side of their pet turtle and wondered whether these shell-carrying creatures were farting. So the bugging question is, do turtles fart? Like the rest of the animals, turtles, too, do fart through the cloaca when they have gas build-up in their stomachs.
For those wondering how long and loud turtle farts are, you should understand that they vary in loudness, just like human farts. However, you’ll not be able to hear most of the time, but you’ll smell or see the turtles fart. Since turtles enjoy farting in water, they are often given away by the bubbles that are seen coming from the cloaca at the back.
If you’ve ever seen some bubbles coming from the turtle’s backside but didn’t know what they were, this was a normal biological process of the creatures passing out some gas. Although many pet turtle owners have reported that the tell-tale of fart burbles is impressive to watch, they have also reiterated that turtle’s farts can be foul-smelling.
So, while you may marvel at the sites of turtles farting as they swim across the aquarium, make sure you keep your distance because the farts smell awful.
Conclusion
We hope this piece provides all the answers for those who have questions about a turtle’s bowel movement and everything related to their poop. However, you should understand that the type, color, shape, and consistency of a turtle’s poop is a significant health indicator.
If you thought that turtles poop out of their mouth, you now understand that is a misguided notion peddled by those who know nothing about turtles. However, this doesn’t mean that creatures are short of bizarre things. Besides breathing with their butts, these creatures can also eat their poop.
Whether you’re planning to adopt a turtle or have one at home, keeping an eye on its pooping schedule and its dropping will help you maintain hygiene, detect any existing conditions and provide it with the best care.