Wildlife news from around the world

How turtles turn Nov 1 2007

Creatures with hard shells, such as turtles and beetles, have to be able to flip themselves over if they land on their backs, otherwise they will be in danger. New research has linked the geometry of turtles’ shells with techniques the animals use to right themselves.

Turtles with high-domed shells can’t do much with their short necks and limbs to push themselves upright, but the shape of the shell itself helps them. It tends to roll.

“Our study illustrates how evolution solved a far-from-trivial geometrical problem and equipped some turtles with monostatic shells: beautiful forms, which rarely appear in nature otherwise,” write the researchers, Gábor Domokos of Budapest University of Technology and Economics and Péter Várkonyi of Princeton University, in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B:  Biological Sciences.

Monostatic shells are those that are stable in only one position (in this case, when the turtle is safely on its feet).

Image © Dr Gábor Domokos