Question:
Are sea turtles herbivorous/carnivorous and can they drink freshwater?
- Asked by Soo HK and Nickee Chung

Answer:

Green turtle feeding on sea grass. Sourced from the internet

It depends on the species. Green turtles are mostly herbivorous, feeding mainly on sea grass and sea weeds, but may occasionally grab a jellyfish or two.  The remaining species are mostly carnivorous.

Leatherbacks feed on jellyfish and you may wonder how such a huge animal can sustain itself with a food item that is 99% water.  In order to find sufficient sustenance, each leatherback must consume its own body weight of jellyfish per day.  So you can imagine how effective they are in controlling jellyfish populations in the oceans.

Hawksbill turtles favour sponges while the olive ridley turtles eat prawns, crabs, some fish and other soft-bottom invertebrates.

Each species with its own unique feeding habit contributes to the ecology of the habitat they live in.

Sea turtles drink only seawater as they live in a marine environment all their lives.  They have to deal with the large amounts of salt consumed with the sea water drunk otherwise they will get into osmotic shock.  To excrete the salt, they have large salt glands behind each eye that produce mucous  about twice the concentration of salt as the seawater.  The mucous or “tears” is constantly secreted from the corner of the eye.  When nesting on the beach, the continued secretion  of this mucous makes it look like the turtle is crying.

This post is part of Turtle Blogathon 2009, where we stayed up for 24-straight-hours to blog about turtles. To make a donation, please visit the Donations page. Posts written during the Turtle Blogathon are filed in the Turtle Blogathon 2009 category.

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