(Beth Clifton collage)
25th annual World Turtle Day was a much bigger success than Donald Trump’s military parade
MALIBU, California––The 25th annual World Turtle Day was “shellebrated,” in founder Susan Tellem’s idiom, back on May 23, 2025, but turtle and tortoise news tends to crawl along much like turtles and tortoises themselves, much more slowly and calmly most of the time than the tanks, distantly modeled after turtles, that lumbered through Washington D.C. on June 15, 2025 in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. military and president Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Baby sea turtles
Other than World Turtle Day itself, only two “turtle news” items clambered into the ANIMALS 24-7 email inbox within a month either way. Both turtle items came from Florida.
The first was that in Sarasota, Florida, according to WWSB television, “A wall of hay bales was installed along the beaches on Anna Maria Island to prevent sea turtles from leaving their habitat,” more specifically to keep hatchlings from running inland instead of out into the surf.
“The hay bales serve both as barrier and as a cue to the turtles,” WWSB explained, who “may be disoriented by lights from local homes and cars.”
For 110 million years, since the Early Cretaceous epoch, baby sea turtles have hatched on beaches by night, then navigated by the stars to find their way to ocean, before birds and other predators arrive with dawn to find and eat them.
Only much later, when the turtles’ shells harden, are they relatively safe from most predators.
Baby sea turtles at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, Florida. (Beth Clifton photo)
Sea turtles & starlight
For most of those 110 million years, starlight visible over the waves, but not from behind coastal dunes and shrubbery, was the only light a baby turtle could see.
Then humans introduced artificial lighting, disoriented baby turtles often ran the wrong way, and sea turtle populations plummeted to the point of endangerment until people finally figured out the lighting problem and responded.
“Nesting season runs all summer long,” WWSB reminded. “Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch wants to make sure people know to turn off artificial light after 8 p.m.
“Beachgoers should avoid moving the hay bales,” WWSB added, “as it could allow the turtles to roam where they will get lost.”
135 year old Galapagos tortoise “Goliath” with newly hatched son. (Zoo Miami photo)
Older parents
The second turtle news item of the month came from Newsweek deputy weekend editor Hollie Silverman.
“Goliath, a 517-pound Galapagos tortoise and the oldest animal at Zoo Miami,” Silverman offered on June 15, 2025, “celebrated his 135th birthday and became a father for the first time,” Silverman reported.
“Goliath, who hatched on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos sometime between 1885 and 1890 according to varying official records, has resided in the U.S. since 1929 and at Zoo Miami since 1981,” Silverman recounted.
“Although he has bred with several females, this is his first confirmed offspring in at least four decades of attempts, according to Zoo Miami.”
The mother, Sweet Pea, “is between 85 and 100 years old and has lived at Zoo Miami since 1960,” Silverman mentioned. Of eight eggs Sweet Pea laid, just one hatched, “on June 4, 2025 after 128 days of incubation,” Silverman said.
“The oldest living tortoise known,” Silverman concluded, “is Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise living on St. Helena, estimated to be 191 years old.”
Susan & Marshall Tellem in 2015.
(American Tortoise Rescue)
“Happy tears”
“I’m still catching my breath—and wiping happy tears,” posted Susan Tellem, also cofounder of American Tortoise Rescue in 1990 with her husband Marshall.
“Over 100 million people around the world joined the shellebration this World Turtle Day,” Tellum said, claiming an audience of more than 1,000 times the audience for Trump’s military parade.
“Can you believe that??” Tellem asked. “Because I can’t! You showed up in the most beautiful ways—with art, poems, shellfies, costumes, classroom projects, and so much love for turtles and tortoises.
“And it meant the world to me,” after an exceptionally difficult 12 months.
Marshall Tellem in earlier years of American Tortoise Rescue.
(Susan Cain Tellem photo)
How American Tortoise Rescue started
“Many happy years ago,” Tellem recounted on June 30, 2024, “Marshall and I founded American Tortoise Rescue in 1990 at a time when there were no national turtle and tortoise rescues.
“This was a change for us, as we had rescued cats, dogs, bunnies, snakes, birds, and many other animals.
“It started because we were in a pet shop and saw two box turtles for adoption. I never thought of turtles as pets,” Tellem admitted, “so this would be another animal we could save and learn more about. We brought the ‘Peggy Sue’ duo home and then wondered, like so many other turtle owners, what they needed to eat. We devoured books and talked to vets.
“The more we read,” Tellem said, “the more we realized the U.S. needed a national clearing house of the correct information.
Susan Cain Tellem, cofounder of
American Tortoise Rescue.
(Marshall Thompson photo)
Burned out––but most of the animals survived
“Since then,” Tellem continued, “the two of us carried this mission on together. But, sadly three years ago, Marshall was diagnosed with dementia. This came right after the fire,” the Woolsey Fire of 2018, “that destroyed our home. Marshall lost his video business equipment and his Navy captain dad’s World War II mementos. It was too much for him. He still loves to wear his American Tortoise Rescue clothes, but can no longer help.
“This is why you have seen just me for several years.”
Almost all of the American Tortoise Rescue animals, including 35 turtles and three cats, survived the catastrophic fire. The Tellems moved a manufactured home onto the property and Susan Tellem resumed her turtle and tortoise caretaking.
“I will not stop till I drop,” Susan Tellem vowed, but more challenges followed, including two more wildfires that razed parts of Malibu in December 2024 and January 2025.
“We were just about a mile out of the evacuation zone, so we did not have to leave,” Susan Tellem emailed to American Tortoise Rescue supporters at Christmas 2024.
“But that is still very scary, especially when you can see the flames from your living room window.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Turtle sentience
Among the many people now following the Tellems and American Tortoise Rescue in doing turtle and tortoise public education are Animal Footnotes blogger Tracy Basile and Natasha Nowick, of Southbridge, Massachusetts, who founded the Turtle Rescue League in 2010.
On April 29, 2025, Basile extensively interviewed Nowick about turtle sentience.
(See https://www.animalfootnotes.org/what-a-turtle-knows.)
“If a turtle gets hit by a car,” Nowick explained, “that’s going to be painful beyond measure. You don’t have to have ESP to feel your heart respond to the trauma they are going through. If they’ve been biting the ground, you’ll find dirt in their mouth. If they have a broken limb, they will hold it close and gasp with their mouth open and eyes tightly shut.
Beth Clifton meets an African spur thigh [sulcata] tortoise. (Merritt Clifton photo)
“They learn to watch us”
“They might not have vocal chords or facial muscles like us,” Nowick said, “but they can make their version of what you’d imagine someone calling out in pain. It’s a sharp intake and then an exhalation — a hiss, if you will. They have cortisol levels that shoot through the roof. All turtles telegraph their pain like any other animal. It almost seems insulting to me that there is any question about this in our modern era.”
Turtles “can experience pain and fear, and absolutely they have their own little ambitions as well,” Nowick continued. “Most of our patients realize what is going on and they learn to watch us. They understand that we are helping them, but they are scared.
Gopher tortoises at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, Florida.
(Beth Clifton photo)
“Snapping turtles acting gently”
“One thing I think surprises a lot of people, is how absolutely loving they are with each other,” Nowick said. “We get in patients of all ages. We regularly see snapping turtles acting very gently, affectionately with each other, just looking at each other.”
Nowick went on to describe turtles “experiencing dreams and revisiting their waking day while they are asleep. I’ve seen turtles out of water sleeping at night,” Nowick said, “kicking their back legs as if they were swimming. I have seen a blind snapping turtle who will hunch up and defend herself as if she is under attack in her sleep without ever having had the benefit of seeing.
“In the depths of sleep, the collective unconscious of 200 million years of turtle instinct is way sharper than anything she could learn,” Nowick said.
(Beth Clifton photo)
“A very different mind than ours”
A turtle mind, Nowick emphasized, “is indeed a very different mind than ours.
“A turtle does have an absolutely remarkable—let’s use a computer word here—an incredible ROM (Read Only Memory), the stuff that tells the computer how to do basic things like when you turn on the power button. It boots up and goes through a sequence. For a turtle that ROM is mind boggling.”
Turtles “come out of the egg,” Nowick cited, “with the knowledge they will need to dig their own nests when they become adults. They are born out of the egg knowing how to sniff out water for their first home. I am talking about an animal who, without ever being taught, knows more about the world than any mammal will inherently know,” meaning without acquired learning.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“What is in their minds will never disappear”
But turtles are interactive, do learn, and do teach each other.
“On a summer day,” Nowick said, “you see it when you see a batch of painted turtles sunning on a log. They are all looking in different directions. They are all keeping an eye open for each other. They know it is to their hazard not to pay attention to their community when sharing a resource.
“Some people would say turtles don’t need to interact, their minds are too simplistic, too archaic, but that is not the case,” Nowick told Basile.
“They have a very dynamic inner world. What is in their minds will never disappear.”
Sea turtle rescuer & educator Ila Loetscher, Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, and range map for the species. (Beth Clifton collage)
Turtle educators
We do not really know who the first turtle educator was. Very likely there were turtle educators among the first societies known to have kept turtles as pets, in ancient Egypt, India, and China.
Among the most prominent of the past several centuries, however, was pioneering aviatrix Ila Loetscher, the renowned Turtle Lady of South Padre Island, Texas.
From 1958 until 1997, three years before her death in 2000 at age 95, Loetscher taught and advocated on behalf of Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles in particular, retiring only when she became physically unable to continue.
(Beth Clifton collage)
(See Remembering Amelia Earhart friend & “Turtle Lady” Ila Loetscher.)
Please donate to support our work:
www.animals24-7.org/donate/
The post Turtle news? Not much is new to a turtle, but they just keep plodding along appeared first on Animals 24-7.