Science Stories Podcast

Ms. Harris shares a story about finding a turtle digging a hole and laying eggs near a construction site. She explains that turtles lay eggs and bury them, while humans require care as infants. She notes the differences in gestation periods and number of offspring. Ms. Harris emphasizes the importance of paying attention to science happening around us and shares that she safely relocated the turtle eggs. She encourages listeners to explore and research science in their surroundings. Hello everyone, Ms. Harris here with a science source podcast for you. I'm losing my voice, I've been sick, so I'm going to do my best to really let you understand my words the best that I can. So today we're going to be talking about the life cycle of an organism compared to the life cycle of a human. So recently I was at a lake where my family is building a new lake house. And the land has just been cleared and leveled so we're looking at the layout of the land and the house and which direction the house should face. So we're standing kind of up above and I look down and I saw a big turtle in the dirt. And so from where we were standing at first I thought the turtle might have been stuck in some way. It almost looked like it was in a hole and it couldn't get out. So immediately my first instinct was that I had to rescue it from the hole that it was stuck in. Well as soon as I walked down to where the turtle was, I found that the turtle was not stuck, but instead it was digging a hole. The turtle was taking one back feet at a time and pulling out dirt and swapping its other foot and making a pretty good sized hole pretty quickly. It was very impressive. So my next concern is why is this turtle digging a hole? And I immediately thought that this turtle might be a soon to be mother that might be digging a hole to lay her eggs in. This was a wonderful thing, however, the problem was that she was digging right where the construction workers were going to pour the concrete footings in a few days. So obviously I didn't want to move her right then because I knew if she was about to give birth or just kind of nearing that time line, now was not the time to pick her up. And thank goodness I didn't because needless to say, before I could even think of a game plan, she had already started laying eggs. Soon after she had laid seven eggs, it was amazing to watch. After she laid the eggs, she covered them with dirt. So obviously I was pretty curious about what was going on. So my parents and I began to do some turtle research. So we learned that turtles lay eggs and then bury them and leave them to hatch on their own. What if you had been left alone as a baby? Unlike turtles and a few other animals, humans have to be cared for when they are infants. We wouldn't make it very long if our mothers just gave birth and then abandoned us. We also learned that the turtles would hatch in two to three months. This is obviously also different from humans because humans are in their mother's womb for nine months. Another difference that I noticed is that there were seven eggs. And most of the time, humans are going to be born one at a time. Obviously, I'm sure you're thinking of some twins, triplets or even quadruplets that you may know. And yes, obviously that is a possibility. However, it is most common for humans to have one baby at a time. But it is most common for this specific kind of turtle to have between three and six babies at a time. So I don't know if you've ever been around someone who was pregnant with more than one baby or with more than one newborn baby. But just imagine if there were seven of them. So another thing that they do have in common between turtles and humans is that in their life cycle, there is a birth. While the births are obviously pretty different, the turtles are in eggs and humans are not. They both still have to have a birth to start their life cycle. So being able to watch this really was an amazing experience. And it obviously encouraged me to do a bit of research on my own about turtle birth and just life cycle research in general. So I just think this is a great reminder that science is happening all around us all the time if we'll just pay attention to it. So to anyone who's concerned about the life of the turtles that were born on the contrarian site, with the help of my parents, I was able to safely relocate the eggs since they were in the middle of the drop site. And they should hatch around the first few weeks of August. So I really hope we get to see them again soon. So I hope this encourages you to maybe find some science around you and do some research of your own. So thank you for listening and I'll see you next time.