Archives for: August 2002
August 2, 2002
02 Aug 2002
Photo by: Lance R. Peck
This is "Chulupa". He's a Yellow-Spotted Amazon turtle. He lives in our office aquarium in Puerto Maldonado. We have had Chulupa for almost one year. He was given to us by a father of a young child who had kept the turtle in a small container. We are not certain how long the family had kept the turtle but when we placed him in the aquarium it was a couple weeks before he figured out how to get to the bottom of the tank and stay there without floating back to the surface.
Chulupa is very much at home in his aquarium now and enjoys the company of about 50 tropical ornamental fish. He enjoys sunning his toes on top of a big root that serves as his lookout during the daytime. For breakfast, lunch and dinner he would like boiled chicken breast, but will eat Lances favorite aquatic plants if he has to.
Turtle Fact 1:
Baby turtles are sold by the hundreds of thousands each year, and this has been going on for decades. They are the most popular of the herptiles bought for the home vivarium.
Turtle Fact 2:
"Chulupa" is not only a Yellow-Spotted Amazon, he is what we call a "side-necked" turtle. Most turtle species draw their heads into their shells by a vertical bending process. With side-necks, the heads are bent under the shell sideways. This difference is considered a very fundamental one, so much so that the side-necks have been put into a separate suborder. All side-necks are fresh water turtles. There are no marine or strictly terrestrial species among them.
