What if Turtles Disappear from the world?

Turtles are slow but its little climbs and digs play a big role between the ocean and the land. The National Geographic Channel quotes the latest research on how turtles shake and change the ecosystem and once they go extinct how human beings will suffer from it.

Jeffrey Lovich, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey, explained: "Any animal with a spine and a shell is a tortoise. It is the only animal in its history that has hips and shoulder blades in its ribs." So the turtle is just a general term. These include tortoises that do not know how to swim, turtles that can be aquatic or semi-aquatic or even almost completely on land, and terrapins that inhabit freshwater and brackish water.

Surprisingly, 61% of the 356 turtle species have been extinct or threatened in modern times. There are only four survivors in the world; the Turtles are trying to survive from the endangered state; the number of desert tortoises in California, Nevada and southern Utah is 37% less between 2004 and 2014. The Mary River tortoise and the Madagascar tortoise, which have long grasses on their heads, also not found as often as before.

Turtles are so common, it is hard to imagine that the number is decreasing. As the demand for meat and pets, the turtle is over-captured, and climate change and habitat destruction have also threatened its survival. Whit Gibbons, a co-author, and professor of ecological retirement at the University of Georgia described the turtle as a long-lived dinosaur, but "there is no time to evolve to avoid being killed on the road." So, in case there is no turtle since then, what changes will the world have?

Gibbons said that the smell of wolrd is going to be different if turtle went on extinct because the turtle is "like a great scavenger" and eats dead fish in the lake and in the river. The tortoise also provides habitat for many creatures. The cave turtles are excavated by more than 350 kinds of creatures such as acupuncture points, rabbits and short-tailed cats. And if the box turtle eats more strawberries, climbs for a while and then discharges the seeds, it maintains ecological health and diversity. Turtles climbed ashore to build their nests and lay their eggs, leaving about 75% of their energy on land. If there is no turtle, these will not exist.

In addition, Gibbons believes that the death of turtles will cause "cultural and psychological losses" in many societies because the turtle is determined and peaceful and is respected by human beings. "I have never heard anyone say, "God, please don't climb this house." He bluntly said: "The turtle is a model of survival. If they survive 200 million years, most of them will be in the centuries. Being eliminated is really terrible. This will not be a good legacy for us."

Lovich believes that what humans can do is not to take the wild turtles home but to go to the shelter to adopt those abandoned. He said that it is good for people and turtles. "Let the wild turtles keep wild." But if you don't want to keep the turtles, it is better to send them to the shelter than to "release them" because they cannot survive in the wild.