The phenomenon of a belly-backed turtle turns itself over

The method of being turned over to a normal state is a big question for researchers.

For turtles, how to get rid of the overturned situation is "a matter of survival".(Photo: BBC)

Hard-shelled animals, especially turtles, often lose balance and fall in a belly-leaning position to the sky. When in this state, they face many dangers. When a turtle is turned over, it cannot turn itself over by rotating the body part under the shell. The scientific world before studied the impact of the height and length of tortoise shell to the ability to overturn, but not paying attention to the morphology of tomorrow.

Dr. Ana Golubovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia, and her colleagues studied the effect of tortoise shell shape on the ability to turn over. They studied 118 turtles (54 males, 64 females) of Hermann turtles, living in the Mediterranean. In the experiment, they flipped each child face-to-face, timing them upside down and finding a connection to the geometric structure of the tortoise shell.

After eliminating the objective factors that could affect the results, the team concluded that the tortoises have a more rounded shell, more rough lines are easier to overturn. They also point out the relationship between turtle shell size and the ability to self-overturn. The bigger the turtle, the harder it is to turn it over.

In the animal world, large individuals often have a survival advantage. However, this is not entirely true for Hermann turtles, since females are usually larger than males.

Smaller male turtles are more flexible, agile, able to mate with more females and also more aggressive. They can be aggressive with other males by causing opponents to fall. In this situation, size will be an advantage, helping the larger ones to win.