SEA TURTLE FACTS
Close Encounters
• It can take 15 to 50 years before a sea turtle is capable of reproducing. Scientists estimate that only one in 1,000 hatchlings will survive to adulthood.
• Sea turtles live their entire life in the ocean only coming ashore when the female lays her eggs. They can migrate thousands of miles and usually return to lay their eggs on the same beach where they hatched.
• When it’s time to sleep, a loggerhead will wedge under a rock close to the shore, or take a
snooze while floating on the surface of deep water.
• Hatchlings weigh less than one ounce and are only 2-inches long.
• Adults can grow over 3-feet long and weigh 200 to 300 pounds!
GATOR FACTS
• How can you tell the length of an alligator? Each inch from its eyes to the tip of its nose equals one foot!
• The largest alligator ever recorded in Florida was 17-feet 5-inches long (5.3 meters).
• Alligators are classified as reptiles along with lizards, snakes, and turtles, but they are actually more closely related to birds, whose direct ancestors were dinosaurs!
• On land, alligators can lumber along dragging their tails, or they can walk on their toes with the heels of the hind feet and most of the tail well off the ground. Using this “high walk,” alligators can run up to 30 miles per hour (48 kph) for short distances.
MANATEE FACTS
• The manatee’s closest land relatives are the elephant and the hyrax, a small, gopher-sized mammal.
• Manatees eat aquatic plants and can consume 10 to 15 percent of their body weight daily in vegetation.
• Resting manatees have been known to stay submerged for up to 20 minutes. When manatees are using a great deal of energy, they may surface to breathe as often as every 30 seconds.
• Fossil remains of manatee ancestors show they have inhabited Florida for about 45 million years. Modern manatees have been in Florida for over one million years.
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