I Actually Ate That: Turtle.

So, while in Vancouver's Chinatown, there were a million food markets showcasing a million foods that Americans would consider "weird." Snakes and (Tokay) geckos on a stick come to mind immediately. There were a few large mushrooms I could not identify. They had tanks of live sole, tilapia, lobster, and crabs. For future reference, the smells mean freshness!

Oh, and I got to try turtle.

Those are turtle balls. Haha, no, they did not go inside a turtle and take out its junk. That's just turtle meat rolled up into a ball as an appetizer! I quite liked them, even if the sauce was something that I could not quite place (soy? probably). Turtle had a strange taste that I'm having trouble describing, but could probably pick out again. Despite being deep-fried, turtle was actually the most healthful of the dim-sum offered at the beginning of the meal.

Turtle has been used in Chinese medicine for centuries. You've heard the shtick several times on this column: you eat an animal, you gain its superpowers. Turtles are among the most long-lived of reptiles, with the record-holder for chelonians being Harriet at 179 years old- that's over twice the lifespan of the average human. Although that was a Galapagos tortoise and not a soft-shell turtle as is commonly used in cuisine, chelonians in general have an almost sage look to them with lifespans to match. It's not unreasonable to think that they might grant anybody who eats their flesh considerable longevity - maybe even youthfulness.

The kicker is that the Chinese were right about this one. Turtle meat has a number of health benefits according to Western science, too! It's significantly lower in calories than beef, albeit with less protein. It's also rich in vitamins A, B1, B2, and B6, which help make food processing easier. The minerals calcium, phosphorus, and zinc are also abundant in turtle meat. The stuff is pretty much its own vitamin shop if you do rigorous activity, and certainly makes a welcome alternative to your standard meats.

Another, odder turtle product called guilinggao is said to be a miracle worker for the skin. It's a strange jelly made from the plastron (tough belly) of a turtle (preferably the three-lined box or "golden coin" turtle, Cuora trifasciata) and a few other botanical ingredients. It's actually a jelly dessert, thought to be good for the skin. A word of warning for foodies everywhere: not all guilinggao contains actual turtle, despite what you see on the can.

Japan has another version of turtle meat still known as suppon. It's expensive, and usually packaged in plastic wrap like in the above screenie from Railgun S. Like most turtle meat, it's made from soft-shell turtle. Its uses are more cosmetic than medicinal; supposedly, its meat is high in collagen, which any lady out there will remember as being great for the skin. Its blood also supposedly tastes great with wine mixed in. The things people do for beauty, I guess.

Next time you go to Chinatown, take a good look around. Stop into a good restaurant and see what's on the native Chinese menu. They know how to make their food good, regardless of "weird" ingredients. Some of it is even great for you! I also could have tried snake soup, but decided against it...because I'm not really fond of soup, snake or no.

Who's That Pokemon - Unova Edition: Carracosta.

Gen V was not blessed with good fossil Pokemon. One of them, Archen/Archeops, is an Archeopteryx with a terrible ability that halves some of its stats when low on health. Tirtouga/Carracosta, the other fossil, is close to being a good wall and learns Shell Smash, the best stat booster in the game. It is never ever leaving the NU tier simply because, like all turtles, it is very slow.

But it's just a sea turtle, you say? Not that sea turtles aren't amazing creatures, but this turtle's a fossil. That means it's based off of an extinct turtle.  If we want to get really technical, Tirtouga is based off of the ancient Protostega gigas while Carracosta's got more aspects of Archelon ischryos - the largest turtle that ever lived. Archelon was more impressive, so let's hope Protostega fans don't get offended.

Archelon (only one species known) was a huge sea turtle that lived during the Late Cretaceous Period, the time when T-Rex and Triceratops were having epic battles on land and Pteranodon roamed the skies. There is a wide range of things it could have eaten depending on jaw strength - speculation ranges from squid to jellyfish to potentially being an omnivore.  The closest living relatives of Archelon are modern leatherback sea turtles. Most of them have been found in Wyoming and South Dakota.



Archelon was one huge turtle. The largest of them measures 13 feet (4 meters) from head to tail and 16 feet (almost 5 meters) from flipper to flipper. It weighed somewhere around 4,900 pounds (2,200 kg) when alive. Flash back to our turtle soup entry - that's a lot of soup.

Aside from sheer size, Archelon has one more distinctive trait: its shell is, in a way, incomplete. Modern turtles have their backbones fused into their shells, which are also bony - seriously, that whole shell has bone under it. It's like they have an exoskeleton. The Archelon had either leather or detatched bone covering its shell. Someone, somewhere, has probably tracked turtle evolution; it must be fascinating to see a netlike shell like Archelon's become solid over time.

Nobody knows how long individual Archelon lived. Supposedly, there was one that lived around a hundred years.  They may have either slept on the seabeds of North America or brumated depending on the weather. They all went extinct with the dinosaurs regardless. For now, we must make due with digital Archelon and sea turtles. Now if only I could get an Adamant one with awesome IV's... *Crosses fingers.*

Reptilefest '12!

Whew! Lots of neat things at Reptilefest this year! In particular, people were focusing on species of reptiles that could easily be caught in one's backyard. There were so many Illinois herps this year! Unfortunately, there were far fewer Burmese pythons and retics; the Lacey Act must have scared some people.

So, without further ado...PICS!

The snake-necked turtle that inspired yesterday's entry! I may have selected the wrong kind. There are some snake-necked turtles native to Argentina, too. Seeing as Australia has strict wildlife laws, this was probably the non-Australian type. Can any turtle freaks help me out here?

Here's a snapping turtle, just to make you pay attention. 

I wanna say this is an alligator, but the angle makes it a little hard to tell. Yes, we had gators and crocs, here.

 

And now for snake pics! These are black-headed pythons. Neat-looking, aren't they? 

Cottonmouth, one of the few venomous snakes found in the U.S. Easily the prettiest. *Gets mobbed by rattlesnake and coral snake fans.*

One of exactly three Burms I saw at Reptilefest this year. This one's a granite. It was so cute to see its owner petting it like a dog or cat (or cow). There was also someone with a shirt saying "savetheburms.org." I may have to check that out...

Although there were plenty of ball pythons around this year, this girl, who was named Persephone, was the only outstanding one. She's a bumblebee (spider x pastel) with a really photogenic personality. Beautiful snake!

Didn't see many Burms this year (and NO anacondas) but you know what I saw a lot more of? Carpet pythons and rosies! I'll be GIDDY if rosies catch on; Eclair, I love you. That doesn't mean you have to be my only rosy.

Bunch of average-looking rosies...but rosies!

 

Cleaner "normal" plus a cute albino.

 

House snake. Pretty sure it's albino. :) Good snakes for people who aren't into mega-killer-pythons...but so are rosies! 

Several normal JCP's and a jaguar morph carpet python.

Okay, last two, then I need to sleep:

Someone brought a siren. I'm starting to love them! :D

That's a cicada - the framer didn't know what species, though. Apparently Thailand has a lot of very interesting cicadas, for whatever reason. Just another reason to save pennies. 

Creature Feature: Eastern Snake-Necked Turtle.

ReptileFest is awesome. For those of you who aren't so into reptiles, ReptileFest is an annual convention in Chicago with snakes, lizards, turtles, crocodilians, and a ton of cool merch. It's not as hardcore as a breeder convention, and is a good crash course in reptiles for those of you who are just curious about scaly creatures. We certainly have plenty of people into reptiles, here, including some in-state Burm breeders!

That said, I was bound to find some good blog fodder there. My own photos will be up on this blog tomorrow, but for now, please make due with one of the very few turtles on this blog thus far:



Looking like a snake did it with a turtle, the common snake-necked turtle (Chelodina longicollis) is probably one of the freakiest  turtles on the planet. It is native to the swamps, lakes and slow-moving rivers of Queensland down to Southern Australia, the land where monsters are born. It eats any animals small enough to fit in its mouth, so mostly fish, insects, and worms.

Starting with the obvious again, that neck is probably the longest, proportionately, amongst turtles. It can stretch longer than the turtle's carapace - which is all of its body, by the way. It has to bend its head sideways to fit it into its shell rather than withdrawing completely.



Aside from its strange appearance, this turtle has at least one odd thing about it: It stinks. No, really. When threatened, snake-necked turtles musk like certain ratsnakes do. If their smell is anything close to what some snakes can produce, it is definitely worthy of the nickname "stinker."

It's really a shame I'm not more of a turtle person. I'm sure there are plenty of weird turtles out there, but I don't look at them enough to pick out the particularly outlandish ones. Fear not, turtle fans; vote on my next poll for a Turtle Week and this problem shall be remedied.

"They Actually Eat That:" Turtle Soup.

If you have ever read/watched a non-Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, you might have heard of a little something called "turtle soup." In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a gryphon and a mock turtle (to be discussed later) sing about the joy that is turtle soup.

But that's just Alice in Wonderland's doing, right? That book has trials about stolen tarts and other crazy things. For all we know, turtle soup might be something Carroll thought up while on drugs. I mean, who would think that a turtle would be appetizing? Right?



Nnnnope! Turtle soup is unfortunately very real, and is enjoyed by almost every continent with access to turtles. Freshwater, saltwater, doesn't matter - if a place has turtles, there is a good chance it has turtle soup. It's usually made with the meat or blood of a turtle. Hell, turtle soup is one of the few foods the U.S. has in common with Europe and China.

That said, turtle soup is illegal in most parts of the United States (which is probably why it's so obscure here). Back before we cared about things like sustainability,  the ideal turtle for soup required a turtle that was around ten pounds in weight. When we say "turtle" in this case, by the way, we are usually talking about either snapping turtles or green sea turtles. Yes, those sea turtles are the exact same kind that you see burying eggs on nature channels. Most of them are endangered, and a lot of other turtle species are vulnerable to over-hunting. Now you know why this soup's illegal in the States.

China is a whole different story. In China, soft-shelled turtles are farmed more or less sustainably. Hard-shelled turtles are avoided in soup for a number of reasons, but can still be made into jelly. Turtle soup is popular in China and Singapore to the degree that China has over 1,500 registered turtle farms. They're probably more economical and ecologically-friendly than pigs and cattle, but don't quote me on it.



As for Europe, they not only have turtle soup, but also...mock turtle soup. Technically, the 'turtle' singing in the Alice story is a mock turtle. Although no good description is given in the book, the artist drew the not-turtle as a bizarre mix between sea turtle and calf. The reason for this? Mock turtle soup utilizes a calf's less-palatable parts, such as the brains, horns, and hooves, in its making:

"Mrs. Fowle's Mock Turtle Soup,:^[3] "Take a large calf's head. Scald off the hair. Boil it until the horn is tender, then cut it into slices about the size of your finger, with as little lean as possible. Have ready three pints of good mutton or veal broth, put in it half a pint of Madeira wine, half a teaspoonful of thyme, pepper, a large onion, and the peel of a lemon chop't very small. A ¼ of a pint of oysters chop't very small, and their liquor; a little salt, the juice of two large onions, some sweet herbs, and the brains chop't. Stand all these together for about an hour, and send it up to the table with the forcemeat balls made small and the yolks of hard eggs." (Wikipedia. citing an old cookbook.)

Yeah. I'd take real turtle soup over that any day.

Creature Feature: Mata mata

Turtles are cute, slow, lovable and most of them would not hurt a fly. Some of them would not mind a vertebrate now and again, but for the most part, they are one of the least objectionable reptiles in the world. It's hard to have a turtle-phobia.


AAAH, REPTILES! Oh, wait...those are actually kinda cute.

Nature just had to make one of the fish-eating turtles as ugly as possible:


Remember, turtles are naturally adorable.

Meet the matamata (Chelus fimbriatus), a turtle native to the Amazon River and some of the surrounding swamps. It is very lazy and very flat; quite easy to mistake for leaves or driftwood from above. Like the three-toed sloth, algae growing on its carapace makes its camouflage even better. It has a 'horn' that allows it to get air while barely moving a muscle. The matamata is probably the real version of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.



Hanging down from its face and neck are fleshy little projections. Nobody really knows what these are for; they could add to the matamata's already superb camouflage, serve as subtle lures or even be sensory adaptations.



As unsuspecting fish draw near, the matamata opens its mouth to create a small vacuum. Like something out of a cartoon, the fish are sucked in. The matamata cannot chew due to its odd mouth, but with a contraption like that, it does not need to.



Mata mata are native to humid environments. Although they are available in the exotic pet trade, they are not a beginner's turtle; not only are they expensive, but they like slightly acidic water with a high tannin content. If all of that just went WAY over your head, you can't have one.