This morning at 5:30am I pulled a toy labeled “turtle” from the Random Object Randomogrifier. Turns out it wasn’t a turtle at all, but closer to a terrapin, and that sent me down the rabbit hole of turtle family history.
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Turtles split from other reptiles about 200 million years ago, in the same lineage that would give us crocodiles and eventually birds. That means turtles are closer kin to crocs and chickens than they are to snakes and iguanas. Their armor is made of scutes, edge-to-edge scales fused into their rib cage. They aren’t “wearing” shells, they are the shell. Crocodiles have scutes too, but theirs never hardened into a full shell.
The toy I sketched looked like a red-eared slider, one of the most common pet turtles. Those sliders are everywhere now, invasive across Europe, Asia, and Africa, all because of the pet trade boom in the 1950s and later the Ninja Turtle craze in the 80s. People bought them, got tired of the smell or the upkeep, and dumped them in lakes and ponds. They breed like wildfire, pushing out native species. It’s the same story worldwide: if you don’t want the pet anymore, re-home it, don’t “set it free”.
The word terrapin itself comes from Algonquian. Colonists heard it, wrote it down, and anglicized it into “terrapin.” It looks like Latin, terra plus pinna, earth fin, but that’s just coincidence. In its original tongue it simply meant a small freshwater turtle. That name stuck, even if the language didn’t survive.
We wrapped up remembering the Pinta Island tortoise, gone extinct in 2012, and the small but hopeful rebounds in Galápagos tortoises and sea turtles thanks to nesting protections and breeding programs. Slow and steady, like the old story says, might just win the race.
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Also, if you or a teacher friend are in need of a 20-30 minute lesson plan about terrapins, feel free to download and share this one:
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