Texas Sea Turtle Coloring Page

texas sea turtle animal coloring pages

Sea turtles are graceful saltwater reptiles, well adapted to life in their marine world. With streamlined bodies and flipper-like limbs, they are graceful swimmers able to navigate across the oceans. Sea turtles are survivors of an ancient time with some amazing abilities. They can glide through the water as gracefully as birds fly through the air, using their flippers as wings.

Sea turtles are among the largest living reptiles. They have scales and a bony shell, are cold-blooded, breathe air, and lay their eggs on land.

Sea turtles are cold-blooded animals; their body temperatures adjust to the temperature of the surrounding waters. Sea turtles are omnivorous and feed on a variety of sponges, cnidarians, mollusks, crustaceans, algae, plants, and fish. Adult turtles have relatively few natural predators, although sharks and saltwater crocodiles are known to consume adults, and nesting females are preyed upon by coyotes and other canids.

Sea Turtles are air breathers, but are capable of holding their breath for quite some time. It is thought that they are also able to absorb oxygen from their skin, mouth and their cloaca. Sea turtles are touch-sensitive on the soft parts of their flippers and on their shell. Most researchers' theories portray that sea turtles have an acute sense of smell in the water.

Sea turtles are relics of one of the world's most ancient vertebrate lineages, and seem prehistoric in many ways. Sea turtles and their ancestors have graced the seas for over 200 million years.

Most their lives are spent at sea; females alone come ashore on traditional beaches to lay eggs. Sea turtles are very long-lived animals that may not reach sexual maturity for at least 20 years of age.

Sea turtles are unintentionally caught and drowned by shrimping vessels that use trawl nets. Unfortunately for the tangled turtles, the nets are not hauled in fast enough to save them.

Sea turtles are sometimes illegally killed for their shell, meat, skin, and eggs, which have commercial value. International trade in all sea turtle parts for commercial purposes is prohibited by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora, also known as the CITES treaty, a multilateral treaty to which the United States, China and approximately 170 other countries are parties.