Do jellyfish make turtles high?
Did you know that Crush is portrayed as “high” because Sea Turtles eat Jellyfish, and the poisons inside the jelly don’t harm the turtle but intoxicate them as marijuana does for humans?
Sea turtles have special adaptations to protect them from sea jelly venom called papillae. They protect the turtle’s throat and mouth from jellyfish stings, help break down the food, and expel excess salt water.
In Finding Nemo, Crush is portrayed high because sea turtles eat Jellyfish. The poison inside the jelly doesn’t harm them but intoxicates them, much like marijuana does for humans.
When a turtle eats Jellyfish, doesn’t it get choked in the mouth?
See this horror?
That’s the back of a sea turtle’s throat. Beneath the adorable face inside the jaw is this.
These spikes all point backward and draw the stinging cells straight into the stomach so they’re immediately digested.
If you’re curious, they’re made of keratin, the same material as hair and fingernails, so the solid, nonliving tissue doesn’t technically get stung.
Once the Jellyfish is in the stomach, it’s game over. Turtles are gutted animals (although they shouldn’t eat everything; don’t litter plastic bags, please) with rigorous digestive tracts. We must preserve these guys; one elderly turtle controls many Jellyfish over its life, which could easily drift into human-settled water.
How are turtles able to eat Jellyfish without getting hurt?
Science has revealed that sea turtles have specialized adaptions in their mouths that effortlessly protect them from jellyfish venom – they’re called papillae, small spiny growths that project inwards towards the animal’s throat and line from the esophagus to the stomach.
Yes, this is what the inside of a sea turtle’s mouth looks like: creepy and nightmarish but real and efficient… Like those possessed by cats, sea turtle papillae are made of keratin – the same protein found in human fingernails and hair –; they help move food down the turtle’s throat and provide armor against jelly stings and excessive saltwater.
Additionally, to hold onto Jellyfish and consume them, most species of sea turtles – such as the leatherback, the largest of them all (some individuals are recorded to weigh up to 907 kg!) – have developed two sharply pointed cusps in their beak-like mouths, one in the upper jaw and the other in the lower jaw, which are so razor-sharp that they easily pierce a jellyfish’s body or any other soft-bodied organism.
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Do jellyfish make turtles high?
Not to mention that the scales of sea turtles (being reptiles) render their skins far less sensitive than humans’, providing yet another powerful armor against the jellies’ stinging tentacles. The turtle’s eyes are its only sensitive body parts, but then again, they are quickly closed upon contact with jellies, lessening the danger of being envenomed.
That’s how sea turtles can eat Jellyfish without getting hurt. This is all the more important because, by feasting on Jellyfish, the reptiles control their populations to maintain a balance in the marine ecosystem and not let the tentacled invertebrates bloom and devastate the oceans.
Sadly, nowadays, sea turtles are under heavy threat of extinction due to consuming plastic bags that are deliberately thrown in the sea, which they confuse for Jellyfish. Thus, the plastic suffocates and kills them. In some areas where the reptiles are being wiped out by plastic waste, jellies live predator-free lives and prosper out of control, destroying the ocean’s delicate balance.
For this reason, it’s now more urgent than ever to protect sea turtles and all marine animals from plastic pollution.
Why don’t turtles get stung by Jellyfish?
They’re well protected with a hard shell and thick keratinized scales on the head, neck, and limbs. Sea turtles that eat Jellyfish close their eyes when doing so. The vulnerability of the oral mucosa is another issue—maybe a protective mucous coat, like the clownfish that live among sea anemone tentacles.
There are many jellyfish species, though—like the one pictured—that don’t have powerful stings and can’t be felt even by a human.
A Portuguese man-of-war is another matter—its nematocysts deliver a wallop—but notice this sea turtle closing its eyes while chowing down on one.
Do jellyfish make turtles high?
How do turtles digest Jellyfish?
Turtles digest Jellyfish the same way you do. Don’t believe me? Go to a Chinese restaurant and order a jellyfish salad. It comes cut up in strips and seasoned with soy sauce and sesame oil and tastes alright despite chewing like rubber bands. But you won’t have any trouble digesting it.
Does a leatherback turtle eat only Jellyfish for a living?
No. Leatherback turtles mainly eat Jellyfish; however, they also feed on other soft-bodied animals.
Would releasing green turtles to eat box jellyfish be a good idea?
Green turtles are an endangered species; from what I gather, they’re herbivores. I imagine you’ll have difficulty finding legally captured green turtles to release. I’m not an expert on green turtles, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.
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Why do turtles mistake plastic bags for Jellyfish?
A US study showed that microbes, algae, plants, and tiny animals start colonizing plastic bags after a while. It creates a scent that attracts many marine animals, including turtles, whales, and birds.
Their instinct will guide them towards these areas that are now full of trash, making them believe all this trash is food and making turtles mistake plastic bags for Jellyfish.
Remember, millions of plastic waste are in the ocean yearly. One example is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the world’s largest concentration of marine debris. Click here to read our article about this.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is located in the Pacific Ocean and is estimated to be 1.6 million km2, around three times the size of France, or two times the size of Texas, and growing. Most debris is made of microplastics that the naked eye can’t see.
Do jellyfish make turtles high?
How do leatherback sea turtles eat Jellyfish when they are mostly poisonous?
I can’t give a definitive answer about this. Maybe someone else can, but I hope you are not confusing ‘poisonous,’ as in ‘ deadly poisonous,’ with the irritation we can get from their tentacles, as the tentacles are armed with stinging cells and may be used to capture prey and defend against predators.
I did look at this briefly, and what I read confirmed my belief that not ALL Jellyfish are poisonous, as your question implies, and only a few out of the many thousands of species are, to humans at least!
Sorry, this is not a perfect answer. Still, there are many examples in the animal world of ‘ one’s man meat is another man’s poison, and animals having immunities to one animal’s defenses that would kill another animal; maybe that’s what is happening here.
Do jellyfish make turtles high?
FYI, leatherbacks don’t eat just Jellyfish; they are just a part of their diet.
Leatherback sea turtles are greedy creatures, and they tend to eat twice as much as their weight. They have scissor-like jaws but feed mainly on soft-bodied animals like tunicates, siphonophores, cephalopods, and salps.
However, they usually feed almost exclusively on Jellyfish, which is strange because Jellyfish are made up of water and, therefore, do not form part of a healthy source of nutrients for the turtles.
In search of California jellyfish, the leatherbacks of the Pacific Ocean tend to migrate 6,000 miles from Indonesia. Apart from Jellyfish, they also feed on mollusks, sea urchins, fish, and squid.
Would releasing green turtles to eat box jellyfish be a good idea?
Green turtles are an endangered species; from what I gather, they’re herbivores. I imagine you’ll have difficulty finding legally captured green turtles to release. I’m not an expert on green turtles, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Do turtles make good pets?
Turtles are suitable only for keepers who have done ample research before getting the animal and thus know what they are getting themselves into! Aquatic turtles are extremely high-maintenance pets, and a lot of time and energy must be spent cleaning their enclosure.
Turtles produce a great deal of waste, and aquatic turtles will succumb to infections and other health issues if kept in an unsanitary environment.
While all reptiles can carry salmonella, the risk of contracting salmonella from a reptile pet is highly overrated and rarely happens. If you do not kiss the reptile or put it in your mouth and wash your hands after handling the animal or its enclosure and equipment, then your risk is vanishingly small. (Your chicken dinner poses a MUCH higher threat level regarding salmonella potential).
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Turtles are one of the more abused animals in the pet trade because pet store personnel are ignorant about their proper care, and owners often buy turtles on impulse or even as pets for young children (always a bad idea).
Turtles generally grow much larger than people realize, and the wrong type of enclosure can make caring for them even harder. The equipment is expensive, and food must be prepared fresh (turtle pellets alone don’t provide optimal nutrition). They have high UVB light requirements and need controlled temperatures.
Do jellyfish make turtles high?
I recommend using a tub rather than a tank for best success with an aquatic turtle. (Such as a Waterland tub). Plastic tubs are much lighter and much easier to keep clean. Get a very large canister-style filter, the biggest you can afford.
Heavy filtration will cut down on the time between full water changes. Keep tub furnishings to a minimum, as everything must be able to be scrubbed and disinfected regularly. Make sure the turtle has a generous dry basking area.
The new mercury-vapor reptile lights provide heat and UVB light and are ideal for turtles. You may need a submersible water heater to keep the water temperature in the proper range for some species.
Terrestrial turtles can be kept in a custom-built turtle table. Blueprints for these can be found online, and they make a much more appropriate home than a tank. They also need strong UVB and heat, but cleaning up after them is much easier. Their diet may be more complicated, but recent books and online care sheets can help owners create a balanced selection of foods for them.
Turtles are fun to watch and have great personalities. They are bright for reptiles and learn to recognize their keepers. Although, like all reptiles, they are incapable of actual affection, they can still provide companionship and thus make good pets–but they are not suitable for those who do not have much time, money, and energy to spare.
What do pet turtles eat?
Mine eat crab sticks, smoked salmon (as it’s a treat), shrimp, any other little bits of fish, cooked chicken, cooked pasta (no sauce), lettuce (they are not too keen on it), celery, baby sweetcorn, apple slices, hardboiled eggs with the shell left on.
They used to eat turtle pellets when they were little but are not so keen on them now that they are large, mature turtles. They seem to like things that they can bite into.
Do Jellyfish have a mind?
Let’s look at one of the smarter Jellyfish, Tripedalia cystophora. About the size of a thimble, it hunts among the roots of mangrove trees along the shores of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans.
It’s a type of box jellyfish. Although it looks like it has two eyes, there are two more on the other side.
Zooming in, we see that each “eye” is a structure called a rhopalium, each with two camera-style lens eyes, one pointing up, another pointing out and somewhat down, plus two slit eyes, two pit eyes, and an organ of balance (called variously a statocyst, statolith, or vestibular organ).
The sense organs in each rhopalium have about 500 neurons. These belong to the peripheral nervous system (PNS).
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Each of the stalks that connect the rhopalium to the body has another 1000 neurons. They are the master control centers, with lots of very active synapses. These are part of the central nervous system (CNS).
The neurons in the stalks feed into the central hub known as the ring nerve. It goes all around in a zig-zag pattern, with four zigs and four zags. The ring nerve belongs to the central nervous system.
Here’s a more detailed view of a small part of the ring nerve. It’s connected to two nerve nets, one above and one below.
Do jellyfish make turtles high?
The nerve ring has an estimated 8,700–17,500 neurons. Eight thousand seven hundred are neurons, while the rest are probably neurons.
The upper and lower nerve nets contain mostly motor neurons and are part of the peripheral nervous system. The upper nerve net also has sensory neurons for touch (mechanoreception) and smell (chemoreception).
The lower nerve net is smaller and only has a few thousand neurons. This jellyfish hunts and eats these little crustaceans of a type called copepods.
The Jellyfish and their prey are attracted to shafts of sunlight piercing the leaves and roots. As evening approaches, the Jellyfish swims out to sea a little but always keeps the trees within sight, then sinks to near the bottom and goes to sleep.
When they mate, the smaller male chases the larger female at tremendous speed. Most of the time, he doesn’t catch her. They have internal fertilization with proper mating.
The female gives birth to live young (planulae or larvae) that are very small but can swim and have about half as many eyes as the adult. The eyes are just eye spots connected to tails, with no nervous system in between.
Do turtles eat snails? What happens if you keep them in the same tank?
We had a red-eared slider which did eat snails. She would hold them in her front claws and rattle them back and forth until they came out of their shells. Even though she liked to eat the snails, they reproduced fast enough that she never ate all of them, and the tank always had snails in it.
These were common ram’s horn snails. I wouldn’t put exotic or expensive snails in with a carnivorous turtle.
Do jellyfish make turtles high?
Do cats eat turtles?
Cats, besides their traditional ambushing hunting style, are opportunists and scavengers. If a cat found a dead turtle, you could assume it would eventually eat some of it were hungry enough.
If a cat found a living turtle and moved around, depending on the size, it would play with it or run from it. The culmination of the playing with it could well be a dead turtle. It’s far from impossible for a determined cat to maim a turtle to death’s door.
A well-fed cat will go for easier meals, though.
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Do jellyfish eat sponges?
From what I’ve read, I would say “no.”
With over 200 jellyfish species in the oceanic waters worldwide, it is very difficult to answer that question. To begin with, jellyfish are carnivores and eat a lot of food.
They feed on various zooplankton and crustaceans, as well as eggs and larvae of other marine organisms. They are passive hunters who drift along the water current, waiting for potential prey to get trapped in their tentacles.
Larger, deadly jellyfish that are aggressive hunters prey on small fish and crustaceans, like shrimp or other jellyfish. Some species of jellyfish can eat a jellyfish that is as large as themselves. Spotted jellyfish are filter feeders and consume seawater to absorb their food.
They also consume large quantities of useful zooplankton, thus causing an imbalance in marine life. They also eat eggs and larvae of marine creatures with huge commercial value.
Do jellyfish make turtles high?