TB: Have you seen turtles express other emotions, like fear or love?

NN: I have seen crimes of misinterpretation on both sides of the argument concerning turtles’ emotional lives. They can experience pain and fear, and absolutely they have their own little ambitions as well. 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. One thing I think surprises a lot of people, is how absolutely loving they are with each other. We get in patients of all ages. We regularly see snapping turtles acting very gently, affectionately with each other, just looking at each other.

TB: How do turtles experience their world? What does a turtle see, feel, hear, or smell?

NN: We know they can feel through their shells and have extra sensitivity along the margins of their scutes. They have wavelength perception that is outside our own and can see into the ultraviolet and the infrared. They see quite well on land and in water. While photographing undersea corals with UV lights, scientists unexpectedly learned that Hawksbill sea turtles exhibit bioluminescence. They glow. We know turtles in general don’t hear much. Freshwater painted turtles hear lower base notes and sense vibrations through the ground, like the sound of approaching footsteps, but can’t hear a songbird, possibly because the lower notes are more useful for survival, warning turtles of nearby predators.

TB: I’ve heard that turtles dream. Is that true?

NN: Scientists are resistant to speak about dreaming because it is difficult to record rapid eye-movement but certainly it doesn’t take too long to watch the movements of a sleeping turtle to absolutely perceive that they are experiencing dreams and revisiting their waking day while they are asleep. I’ve seen turtles out of water sleeping at night and 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.

TB: What’s going on in a turtle’s head? Talk about the turtle mind.

NN: There are answers that I’m going to give that might sound dis-satisfying but the more I think about it the more it simply puts me in awe of what a turtle mind is like because it 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. They come out of the egg 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. In a very real way it is like having the minds of the last million generations whispering over your shoulder into your ear for your benefit. And that is outstanding. So when I speak of wisdom I am talking about an animal that, without ever being taught, knows more about the world, is more in equilibrium, in harmony with its surroundings, than any mammal will inherently know.

TB: Do they learn from each other? Do they hang out together?

NN: Absolutely! On a summer day 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. They have a very dynamic inner world. I choose to see it that way because what is in their minds will never disappear. That collective unconscious, their extensive instinct.

TB: I understand turtles do an amazing job keeping the waters clean. In fact, turtles everywhere seem to have a deep and profound connection to water and many are keystone species. Can you talk a little about “turtle ecology”?

NN: Let’s talk about equilibrium by looking at a specific species. It’s no mistake why I keep returning to snapping turtles, because they are truly in this section of the world, in New England, a highly profound keystone species. They are widely considered to be the “Janitors of the Wetlands.” Things die. Birds die. A squirrel dies. Fish live, breath and die in a pond. Plants sprout, multiply, and then die in the fall. If nothing happened to any of this stuff, our ponds would be unpleasant soups of rotting chemistry. But the fact that there are snapping turtles eating away at all this is the most amazing gift from the universe. They are turning something that died into nutritious soil at the bottom of a pond. Animals or plants could even die of a disease that might spread to other living beings in that ecosystem. The snapping turtle has an amazing immune system and digestive tract to be able to handle that kind of thing.

In fact, in March and April, long after they wake up from brumation, there’s nothing to eat in a pond, so they’re eating mud. They are re-digesting things they may have already digested for a few calories that it offers. Those giant monster claws of theirs are churning up rotting leaves at the bottom, liberating oxygen, mixing everything in a subsurface compost heap. In living their subtle quiet lives, they are keeping our wetlands in balance.

As a snapping turtle grows older, it becomes more vegetarian. When you have a century-old snapping turtle that weighs 50 to 60 pounds, it is only and primarily eating plant life in that pond, keeping the waterways clear to allow for other animals — ducks, waterfowl, all sorts of things—to be able to enjoy that pond and it is doing it because its instincts are telling it to do it. It is living, digging, eating, cleaning, hibernating, all in tune with the seasons and mother nature and the pond is benefiting from it. A snapping turtle in its wetlands, in its swamp, moving thru turtle time, is the wisest creature I know; they are in balance with the environment around them and we could all, as humans, do no worse than to find such a role model on how we should be living upon this planet.

Each and every turtle species plays a role like that — in streams, vernal pools, in giant lakes, and small ponds. Turtles really are a blessing upon all of our various types of wetlands.

TB: Turtles have played an important role in Indigenous creation stories, especially in the Northeast. Do you know the Haudenosaunee version? It begins with Skywoman falling out of her Skyworld tumbling down to earth, but there is no land here on earth, only water and the water animals. Turtle, seeing her fall, lets her land on his back, and then all the other animals—the beaver, the loon, the muskrat, and more—call a council to ask: “How can we help this woman? What can we do to give her a home here with us? How can we welcome her more?” After much effort, they succeed in bringing up a fistful of dirt from the bottom of the sea and place it on turtle’s back so that land will grow. It’s just such a beautiful story! *

NN: I will embrace any of those versions as creation stories way before I will embrace the image of an old guy floating on a cloud in the sky! North America is truly gifted because we are the biological hotspot for turtles in the world. There are more species of turtles in North America than anywhere on this planet. And that’s why it isn’t a surprise in Native American cultures to see turtles regarded so highly that they named their homeland—

TB: Turtle Island!!!

NN: Exactly!

TB: Turtles face so many dangers today from habitat loss, to ingesting plastic, to getting hit by cars and, of course, from poaching. What would a better world for turtles look like?

NN: That is something I have spent a lot of time in my career thinking about. Because our current world is literally the antithesis of this. The fact that turtles have to be in different places during different times of the year in different parts of their lifecycle is the key to their destruction, because we humans make it impossible for them to move safely. Habitat destruction and cars are the two greatest threats. I think of some of biggest, most involved rescues we’ve done and they sadly orbit around some human ambition like draining a pond. The people who are signing the orders to do this kind of work don’t perceive the impact or experience the tragedy.

A better world for turtles is a world that has vastly fewer humans, way less pollution and plastic, and we aren’t bisecting all the critical spaces they call home. It’s a world where there are raised roadbeds so animals can simply go underneath to get to the other side. And a world where we are more considerate of how we live and think about the consequences of our actions.

TB: What keeps you going?

NN: I lean heavily on the turtles, because they are so truly capable. Think about it. If nesting females have such dire odds of making it back to their home alive, how the heck do they get up every spring and say “I’m gonna do this” ? It’s that lesson, that fearlessness, that drives me. If they can do it, dammit, I can do it.

* The Haudenosaunee creation story told here is based on a retelling by Robin Wall Kimmerer in "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants," Milkweed Press, 2014.