Today we (Sondos and Anita) walked over to the duck pond to find something to find to investigate. As we walked, we looked around, talking about the various phenomena we could understand and asking questions.
We noticed that there were a lot of turtles on the rocks and almost all of them had their necks extended. We decided to investigate why the turtles in the duck pond stretch their necks out and up. We sat down and starting making observations.
Photo by Steve R. Harris
Observations:
1) It was a hot, sunny day and there were about 20 turtles perched on the heated rocks.
2) They were all, except for one, balancing on their bellies, with their limbs outstretched and their necks extended out and up.
3) The water must be extremely cold for the cold-blooded creatures such as the turtles and the koi.
4) Most of the turtles did not visibly move for the half hour that we observed them.
Hypothesis:
The turtles are warming themselves and attempting to maximize their solar gain by exposing as much of there skin as possible to direct sunlight. The heated rocks warmed the bottoms of their shells and the sun on their backs heated the tops. Turtles are cold-blooded, as such, they spend as much time as possible heating their bodies in the sun. The hot rocks and the sun on their backs heat their shells a good deal, which transfers heat to their bodies. By stretching their limbs and necks, they maximize their bodies solar gain.
After coming to these conclusions we had gotten very hot sitting on the grass. We noted that the turtles on the rocks must raise their body temperature by a large amount.
We also observed that the turtles managed to remain perfectly still for long periods of time while stretching quite far. We talked about how difficult it would be for us to extend our limbs and necks for much less time and agreed that the turtles must not find it uncomfortable.
