In nature, baby turtles grow up without parents, which might sound lonely to us humans.
But sometimes it’s an advantage.
For instance, the San Francisco and Oakland zoos are raising two dozen western pond turtle
hatchlings to return to the wild.
Because the turtles don’t need to learn from their parents, they do well in a zoo.
A turtle’s childhood is all “nature” and no “nurture.”
It comes pre-programmed with all the instructions it needs to learn skills.
It just has to practice and practice and practice.
These two-month-old turtles are being fattened up in captivity. The idea is to keep them
at the zoo until they’re too big to be eaten by frogs or birds.
Western pond turtles are California’s only native aquatic turtle. They once thrived,
but today they’re struggling. We humans have shrunk and drained their ponds and lakes
to build houses and roads.
Now we’re trying to help the turtles. But here’s the paradox: we’ve raised these
healthy turtles, but there’s little wilderness to return them to.
So biologists in San Francisco took matters into their own hands. They put radio transmitters
on the turtles to keep track of them. And they created a wild place, as best they could.
They took a polluted lake next to a highway and cleaned it out.
They moved out more than 60 pet turtles people had abandoned there. They had to. Pets -- like
these red-bellied turtles, which aren’t native to California -- are more assertive.
They were taking the best logs. And turtles need logs to bask on to digest their food.
More than 50 western pond turtles now live in this lake. So far they’re thriving. Here
in the city, it’s a little bit of wilderness, or at least something close to it. And perhaps
one day these turtles won’t need us humans at all and will go back to depending entirely
on their instinct.
Wait, don’t leave yet! These western pond turtles are notoriously shy, but you don’t
have to be. Click that “subscribe” button to get a new video every other week. It’s
free and it helps us support the show. Thank you for subscribing. And see you next time.