THE BIG VULCAN BIOLOGY POST (aka Vulcan is a Hell Planet)
DISCLAIMER: I am not a biologist, astrophysicist, neurologist, animal psychologist or literally anything that would qualify me to talk about this with 100% confidence. This is the result of dozens of headcanons and obsessive deep dive research. I don’t want this post to be three miles long, so after I address the planetary stuff I will oblige y’all with a Read More.
Adsfasdkfjhaslkdfh I’ve been working on this post for almost a month SO HERE WE GO!
First of all, Vulcan (aka T’Khasi) is a HELL PLANET, which is part of the reason they’re so badass, I say this for the following reasons:
No moon(s) (natural satellites)
Sodium (Salt) is so rare on the planet that Vulcan’s oceans are freshwater
It’s a “Super-Earth” (as in big chonkin’ planet of similar composition to earth in the “goldilocks region”)
Let’s do this.
“Vulcan has no moon Ms. Uhura.”
-Spock, The Man Trap
Tons of things change about our planet if there was no moon:
Much darker nights (no moonlight)
Much lower sea levels since there is no gravity from the moon to pull it upward.
Lower and weaker tides because the water is pulled by the sun instead of the moon, and it depends on how large the Vulcan solar system’s sun is for how big the waves are.
Stronger winds from faster planet rotation.
Depending on whether the axis of the planet would straighten or tilt further without the moon’s pull, combined with the faster rotation would lead to more severe seasons (strong tilt) or no seasons at all (no tilt)
The first factor may lead to Vulcan eyes being very catlike even if they aren’t nocturnal (I think they’re crepesucular but we’ll get into that later). Which given the likely nature of their blood and their herbivorous eating habits they probably aren’t. The sky would still be so dark that our human eyes couldn’t even see our hands in front of us, being blind when the sun goes down could be a death sentence. Alternatively, if they didn’t develop strong night vision that may be one of the reasons why they have such strong senses of hearing.
The stronger winds, faster rotation, and stronger (or nonexistent) seasons come from the lack of resistance and friction that stronger tides and the moon’s pull create on our planet. I suspect that Vulcan is larger, or at least denser than Earth, but I’ve been informed that according to the TMP novelization that it does rotate faster. I also think that Vulcan’s tilt is on the more extreme end to get the hostile extremes like storms and heat that we see on Vulcan.
If you look at this image of Vulcan, water covers way less of the planet’s surface than Earth. I don’t think this is necessarily because Vulcan has less water, but that it isn’t spread as far because of the lack of moon, and the fact that the oceans are freshwater, I’ll get into that shortly.
“My ancestors spawned from a different ocean than yours.”
-Spock, The Man Trap
In the Star Trek: The Original Series (third) pilot The Man Trap, there is a creature that kills its victims by draining their bodies completely of salt. Spock encounters the creature but does not die, implying his (and Vulcans overall) body contains little to no salt. His justification is that his species did not evolve from a salinized ocean.
What does it mean to have oceans with no salt?
This has to mean that sodium is a very rare mineral on Vulcan, as the reason our oceans are so salinized is due to erosion of minerals by rainfall, carried from river to ocean. Salt in the ocean is also generated by submarine volcanic activity, which means either that the volcanoes on Vulcan (which we definitely know exist) somehow don’t produce salt, or the vast majority of the submarine volcanoes have been inactive for millions if not billions of years. The active volcanoes on Vulcan must be very far inland and/or Vulcan has almost no rivers, which given how hot the planet is, wouldn’t actually be too much of a stretch of the imagination.
Which means every single lifeform on T’Khasi, including Vulcans, evolved biosystems that exist without (or with very little) salt content. Any salt that exists would likely be deep beneath the planet’s surface, and within volcanoes.
No saltwater has a ton of consequences:
Plants (like underwater algae) are rarer and may not photosynthesize the same way Earth plants do, meaning less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, which means more greenhouse effect, which means higher temperatures.
The lack of salt would also mean less diverse plant life (at least as humans know it) and given the lack of visible rivers and vast swaths of desert on Vulcan, we can safely say vegetation must be hardier and infrequent.
Lower sea levels as the oceans would have lower density due to lack of salt.
Little to no water convection, which salt is crucial for on Earth. Which means warm ocean water doesn’t move to cold regions and vice versa. Creating extremes, the equator being obscenely hot, and polar waters freezing at the poles more extensively.
Lack of convection means more frequent and stronger storms like hurricanes.
If you thought the lack of a moon made Vulcan inhospitable, compound it with the low sodium factor and you’ve got a planet of even more severe extremes than before. The heat, and the decrease of plant diversity definitely explain why the vast majority of Vulcan is rocky desert, even being near the water poses more extreme dangers than it would on earth due to the increased frequency of hurricanes.
“Mr. Spock is much stronger than an ordinary human being.”
-Kirk, This Side of Paradise
I am almost 100% sure that Vulcan is either bigger or denser than Earth. Which would explain why Vulcans are so much stronger than Humans and other species that exist on similar gravity worlds.
Effects of a high-gravity planet or “Super-Earth” include:
Everything is shorter or has very strong foundations, plants, animals, structures, and people.
More “Armageddon” class asteroids would hit the planet (like the one that killed the dinosaurs and created the Gulf of Mexico)
Larger liquid mantle under the planet’s surface, higher pressure under the surface as well.
Weaker magnetic field due to lack of convection in the planet’s core (not to be confused with the mantle interacting with the planet’s crust). Which means a weaker atmosphere, lower magnetism in surface metals, and increased vulnerability to solar flares.
More volcanically and seismically active due the the increase in the mantle’s size and generated heat, more earthquakes, and more volcanic eruptions.
Would have to have a smaller sun but be closer in orbit to it than earth.
Extremely deep oceans, potentially with water under so much pressure at the bottom that it becomes solid like ice. Luckily Vulcan is not an ocean world, because the pressure would block the planet’s core from interacting with the atmosphere, which would prevent life as we know it from happening.
There is plenty of evidence for this on so many levels. We never see any plant life similar to trees on Vulcan. Nor animals significantly larger than Vulcans, the ones that are bigger are much more muscular. Vulcan’s sky is more red than blue because of the lack of oxygen molecules for the light from the sun to filter as blue. I actually headcanon that Spock is unusually tall for a Vulcan because of his human heritage (Leonard Nimoy was around 6ft tall) , and may have had heart and muscle problems in his teens and early adulthood while on Vulcan.
Perhaps Vulcans are the result of many more extinction level events than we are, contributing to their hardiness. Perhaps they are, evolutionarily, not too much older than we are, and had more incentive to develop extraterrestrial technology than we have, so that they could repel Armageddon Class meteors and defend their planet against Solar Flares? Space travel being born out of self-preservation rather than curiosity. Which would absolutely account for their attitudes in the beginning of Star Trek: Enterprise.
It could be that Vulcans still maintain a semi-nomadic lifestyle even today because their planet is so incredibly volatile. Unsentimental and utilitarian in anything less than the most sacred of architecture long before they adopted the teachings of Surak. Their own survival more valuable than any structure that would inevitably be damaged or destroyed by their planet’s harsh environment.
In summary, Vulcan is a Nightmare Planet because:
So, so many much natural disasters, like, so many, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, twisters, just, so many more than Earth.
Water is relegated to specific locations in the world rather than spread across it due to lack of flow and lower sea levels.
Extreme temperature changes, intense heat, intense cold, hard to breathe, stronger gravity.
Due to the planet’s hostility, there is a smaller diversity of life than we have here on earth, which means fewer and hardier food sources that, like Vulcans, are very difficult to kill.
So… How do they handle it? What features have they developed to adapt and thrive in such an inhospitable place?
First thing is first, lets talk about
BLOOD
“My hemoglobin is based on copper, not iron.”
-Spock, Obsession
Funny thing is Spock, it’s not hemoglobin at all! It’s hemocyanin! In fact, there are earth animals that have it, among them Horseshoe Crabs, crustaceans, mollusks and spiders!
Hemocyanin is blue when it hasn’t been exposed to oxygen, and blue-green when it has, according to some sources on Vulcans their blood is orangey red when unexposed to air and that’s why they have pink lips and so on, but we can brush that off as chemical variation within their hemocyanin. Better yet, maybe it’s trendy for Vulcans to wear pink lipstick nowadays, ‘cause Surak knows how horny Humans and Vulcans are for each other XD! Anyway!
Hemocyanin does quite a few things that our blood can’t, it’s uniquely built for high pressure, low oxygen environments, as well as endure temperature extremes like cold (not unlike nights on their planet). Not only that, but it coagulates and clots WAY faster than our blood. Which means wounds seal themselves off from harmful bacteria and stop bleeding much faster than hemoglobin. Pair that with the Vulcan ability to enter a healing torpor, no wonder Spock keeps surviving environments and wounds that would definitely have killed a human.
Now, the animals I listed don’t have veins, which for us carry oxygen around via hemoglobin, so it’s possible that the same difference that causes Vulcan blood to be a coppery orange-red beneath the skin, is the same reason they have veins. Allowing them to look more like us and lack the exoskeletons and deep ocean delving that their earth blood cousins have.
“The ship’s temperature is increasingly uncomfortable for me. I’ve adjusted the environment in my quarters to 125 degrees.”
-(Elderly) Spock, The Deadly Years
Oh goodie, the Vulcan blood temperature discourse has arrived, the age old question, are Vulcans warm-blooded or cold-blooded? The answer to this question is
YES
I am firmly in the small (but hopefully growing) camp Vulcans Are Heterothermic. Among the earth animals we know to be heterothermic are bumblebees, several species of bats, the opah fish, and the arctic ground squirrel. Of all these animals, despite the opposite temperature intensity of Vulcan’s environment, I’m basing how Vulcans function on the last one, the arctic squirrel.
Which means they can deliberately control their body temperature in accordance to the needs of their survival. I imagine, just as arctic ground squirrels can drop their body below zero as needed (entering what is called a “daily torpor”) Vulcans can do the same. In turn, they could possibly skyrocket their bodies to temperatures that would be a lethal fever for humans. Which makes both McCoy’s “nonexistent Vulcan metabolism” comments in various episodes, as well as describing his blood as “ice water” make sense. As well as Spock being able to handle the heightened body temperature caused by Henoch in “Return to Tomorrow”. It also explains why Spock was in far better shape than Bones in the freezing temperatures of the planet from “All Our Yesterdays”.
However, like arctic squirrel newborns, they start out as ectothermic (cold-blooded) which lends itself to the Vulcan infants needing even more skin to skin to survive than humans theory by @acesexualspock. Being born cold blooded would prevent them from immediately dying the second they were exposed to the dangerous extremes of Vulcan’s heat. I also think they slowly lose the ability to control their metabolic rate as they grow older, slowing down dramatically as they age, which is why Spock gets increasingly colder as he ages rapidly in “The Deadly Years”.
“The brightness of the Vulcan sun has caused the development of an inner eyelid.”
-Spock, Operation: Annihilate
I wanna thank @tribbleland for inspiring this part in particular.
I want to offer a special congratulations to furries people who let their love for anthro-cats bleed into their love for Vulcans, turns out Vulcans are very catlike! Like our feline Terran friends, Vulcans have what is called a Nicitating Membrane. It’s functions that would serve Vulcans well in their desert home include spreading moisture across the eye, protect the eye from small water and small debris (like sand for example), as well as protecting the eye from ultraviolet radiation, which is more or less what Spock said in that episode. Other animals that have Nicitating Membranes aside from felines is actually the majority of the animal kingdom, and primates (like us) are the exception and not the rule. I also subscribe to the idea that Vulcans have other desert dweller features like thick hair and eyelashes, sealable nostrils, big feet, a crepuscular sleep cycle (avoiding extreme midnight and midday temperatures), and a tough as nails digestive system!
As an added bonus fact since this section is pretty short: It makes purrfect sense for Vulcans to purr! In cats purring is an emotional regulator when they are angry or scared (Vulcans are ALL about regulating their emotions) as well as purring when they are happy. It is also a mechanism for healing themselves, their kittens, and their owners, the frequency at which cats purr (25-140 Hz) cover the same frequencies that are therapeutic for bone growth and fracture healing, pain relief, swelling reduction, wound healing, muscle growth and repair, tendon repair, and mobility of joints. I’m over here getting emotional about the mental image of like, Spock or Tuvok or smth sitting next to a wounded crewmember and just like, purring with a completely straight face and that is soft and just a little funny and I am emotionally compromised.
“And are it’s natives predatory?” “Not generally, but there have been exceptions.”
-Spock to Trelaine, The Squire of Gothos
Surprise! This isn’t just going to be about Vulcan dietary needs, it’s gonna be about animal behaviors and self-domestication as well! I was trying to think of herbivores that are capable of eating meat, and then this idea hit me like a bomb going of in my head-
Vulcans are like Hippos!
I don’t mean I think they used to be hippo-like (visually anyway) somewhere along the evolutionary line. I mean that they were probably big, extremely aggressive, pack roaming herbivores that are able to eat carrion when food is scarce. Have you ever seen a video of a group of Hippos smashing an alligator to smithereens? They kill more humans than any solitary predator on the African continent! What about a murder of crows killing a cat that injured one of them, or a group of bison saving a calf from a lion?! Herbivores can be insanely aggressive while still being social, plant-eating animals.
With that in mind, let’s talk about self-domestication! This is something that we humans (and to an extent, cats too) did way back in our biology according to some studies, we bred out aggression and bred in cooperativeness and curiosity. Cats, while partially domesticated by us, started looking for mates that were more sociable so that their offspring could exist closer to humans (and their food) as well as to tolerate other cats. While I do think Vulcans self-domesticated to a degree, I do not think they were able to do so nearly to the same extent as humans or our deliberately domesticated companions. Vulcan is a harsh, violent, and unforgiving planet, even more so than Earth, if Vulcans were naturally as friendly and curious as we Humans are now, they would not have survived as a species.
I believe this is why their emotions are so primal and strong, and things like Pon Farr and their unusually high wariness of the new and unexpected still exist so strongly. How do they live together in such high numbers and develop a functional society? They developed other means of coping as a work-around the impracticality of decreasing aggression!
“Call it a deep understanding of the way things happen to Vulcans.”
-Spock, The Immunity Syndrome
So, how do you have a species as aggressive, unforgiving, and frighteningly strong as Vulcans keep from completely destroying itself (aside from Surak’s teachings)? You take the empathy that humans already have, turn it up to 11, and tack on every evolutionary possibility to increase it. We already know how the Earth comparisons for Vulcan empathy: the extreme vitality of touch for the survival and emotional stability, cats purring to heal each other and themselves (and regulate emotions), nonverbal communication, the ancestral instincts of an infant animal being able to walk days after its born. What if we had all of these traits in remarkable spades, Vulcans certainly seem to! (Be prepared, the science starts getting a little squidgy because there are no real world comparisons and neurology research is very jargon heavy)
Electricity is a fundamental part of the biology of nearly all living things, it allows synapses to fire, regulates our internal organs, and gives us our senses of touch and movement. Skin to skin is so incredibly vital to the survival of infants, and the emotional stability for adults, that needing any more touch could be impractical and counterintuitive. So what if we got more from less? What if our sense of touch, and the acuteness of being able to read the emotions of others from body language and touch manifested as a form of what looks like from an outsider’s perspective, telepathy!
Now what if the radius of the sensation of touch could be extended much farther, say being able to sense someone to the same intensity I described in the last paragraph, like, through a wall or from across a room? What if you could connect to other lifeforms with the same ability like a chain circuit that could connect a whole species together in one giant circuitboard? I just described what Vulcans call the kwar’ma’khon, the telepathic energy that connects all Vulcans to each other!
Imagine having this same intense telepathic connection to someone for an extended period of time, like a t’hy’la or Bond Mate. What if you had a relatively easy to master non-lethal attack against other members of your species, that comes to you easily due to your intrinsic understanding of nerves and touch, like the Vulcan Nerve Pinch. In turn, what if, through the intensity of this connection you could transfer everything you knew and saw and felt to another person in the event of your death. That way, if you survived the harshness of your world without dying violently or unexpectedly, you could deliberately pass on that knowledge and those instincts to your next of kin, like the Katra. (thanks @distractedducky @spacedancer1701 & @find-me-in-outer-space)
Now, that’s A LOT of empathy on top of A LOT of aggression, if you don’t have a work around for any of these, as a species you’d be rendered a complete emotional wreck pretty much 24/7 (or whatever the time cycles for Vulcan are). Which is where @ineffablebuddies theory that Vulcans can control, or at least mitigate their incredibly strong emotional reactions the same way they control their nervous system and metabolic rate. Which is how they are able to be touch telepathic, able to enter a torpor at will, and be heterothermic in the first place. The only reason Vulcans come off as unemotional to us is because we simply do not see and feel the way that they can. Unlike us, because of their ability to control their own internal chemistry, if they follow Surak’s teachings and/or Syrranite ideology, they can take that emotional regulation to the extreme.
(BIG EXHALE) Congratulations on getting through this insanely long post! I hope you enjoyed it, if you want sources on any of my non-tumblr post research just let me know in the notes. LLAP! 💚🖖🏻💚
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The turtle in question tensed up as he heard Donnie’s “I-need-a-test-subject” voice. And knowing what he’d been up to for the past few days, it wasn’t hard to figure out what he wanted one for.
Raph’s younger brother practically skipped around the corner and into the kitchen, where the older turtle was frozen with his mouth half-open around a sandwich. “Come, dear brother,” Donnie sang in his “sweet-and-disarming” voice, which the whole family knew by now to fear. “Before you start eating, I have some questions for you!”
Raph only had time to squeak out a, “Huh?” before Donnie grabbed him by the mask tails and dragged him away.
“Ack, Dee, stop - Mikey! Mikey, help!”
Mikey, who had just walked into the kitchen, only offered a solemn bow and said, “You will be missed.” As the sounds of Raph’s struggles faded further into the lair, Mikey eyed the sandwich his brother had dropped on the counter. He probably wasn’t coming back for that, right?
—
Raph wiggled uncomfortably on the stool he’d been unceremoniously sat down on as he watched his brother rummage through various drawers in his lab.
“Now,” said Donnie ominously, turning around and snapping a latex glove over his wrist, “shall we begin?”
Raph gulped nervously.
Donnie rolled his eyes. “Oh, relax.” He pulled on a face mask and secured the sides so it would stay up. Combined with his ninja mask, only his eyes were left showing, and they were staring at Raph intensely. “I only want to have a look at your bones.”
“Not really my job,” he replied easily. “Now, open your mouth. I need to see your jaw.”
Raph did as he was asked, and waited for Donnie to finish humming and gently turning his head from side to side. He already knew that of all his brothers he had the strongest bite. He was a snapping turtle, after all. And considering Donnie had already bothered Leo about his unique species quirks, it made sense that he’d want to take a look at Raph’s jaw.
“Hmm… interesting,” said Donnie eventually, pulling back and writing a note on a clipboard that he’d gotten from… somewhere? Before Raph could ask any questions, Donnie lifted a smallish contraption up near his face. “Bite down on this as hard as you can,” he instructed. Raph obliged, biting and squeezing until he felt a twinge of an ache in his teeth.
Donnie took the machine back and read whatever it had recorded, copying the number down to his clipboard.
"Well?" asked Raph, curious.
"412 Newtons," Donnie answered.
Raph frowned mildly at the unfamiliar measurement. "Is that a lot?"
"It's roughly 1.5 times the force of an average human teen's bite, and just under a hundred pounds."
"Oh."
Donnie glanced up from his clipboard. "You sound… disappointed?"
"I guess?" said Raph, not entirely sure himself how he was feeling. "I thought snappers were supposed to have a super strong bite, like, a thousand pounds or something."
Donnie shook his head. "From what I’ve found, that number comes from the fact that a snapper's entire bite force is concentrated into a tiny point on the tip of their beak. Their jaws are actually, on average, about the same strength as a human's - although they can get nearly three times as strong if the turtle lives long enough."
Raph unconsciously reached up to touch the blunt, triangular beak in the center of his mouth.
"It's not as sharp as an unmutated turtle's beak," Donnie said, "but I think it's helping you in other ways. I can't say for sure just by looking at the surface like this, but I believe that the blending of beak and jaw has created a stronger bone structure. Humans' brains will prevent them from biting hard enough to seriously damage their teeth, except in times of extreme stress; however, your bones seem to be able to take quite a bit more pressure than a human's, despite the fact that they are far closer to human in shape than turtle."
Raph sat for a moment, brow lightly furrowed, digesting this information. "So… I can bite harder than a human, but not as hard as a regular snapping turtle?"
Donnie rolled his eyes at the oversimplification, but his excitement didn't seem too badly dampened. "In short, yes. And while humans' jaw strength tends to begin a slow decline after their teen years, turtles' bites only get stronger as they grow. Would you be willing to measure your bite force for me periodically over the next few years?"
"Yeah, I guess so," said Raph, shrugging. Now he was curious too, if his bite force would level off or keep growing. Plus, he could already see his brother's eyes shining at the thought of making a graph to visualize the data.
Raph smiled, in a good mood now. He totally wasn't regretting this like he thought he would! "So, what do ya got next for me, Don?"
His brother grinned wide, looking almost feral. “I’m gonna need you to hide.”
…And there was the regret.
—
As it turned out, all Donnie wanted from that test was to see if Raph could pull himself completely inside of his shell. He could, but it wasn’t something he did often, both due to his tendency to confront problems head-on, and the fact that it was a bit hard for him to fit. Apparently, wild snapping turtles weren’t able to do the same, thanks to their small plastrons. One thing they had that Raph didn’t, though, was a vermiform tongue (which Raph was actually a bit glad about - he just couldn’t imagine having a wiggly worm in his mouth, fake or not.)
“The vermiform appendage lures prey into the turtle’s mouth so that they can hunt by just sitting still,” Donnie explained for the third or fourth time (Raph had sort of stopped paying attention) as he paced across the lab excitedly. “But humans are active hunters, meaning you wouldn’t need the vermiform appendage if you hunted like a human, which you could thanks to your body being mostly human-structured.”
“Uh huh,” agreed Raph absently, wondering when he’d get to go eat.
“Our biology clearly isn’t a perfectly even mix of human and turtle in every aspect,” Donnie continued, “and although I don’t have any definitive proof, it’s almost like the mutagen was making evolutionary decisions in super speed which is why all the mutants we’ve seen are so incredibly stable and healthy and ohmigosh I’ve got to talk to Draxum about this as soon as possible!”
As his brother paused to take a breath, Raph interrupted. “Can I go now?”
Donnie looked a little disappointed, but a glance at the clock had him sighing in defeat. “I guess I have had you here for a while… There were a few more things I wanted to go over, but I guess we can do that later.”
“Okaythanksbye!” said Raph in a rush, darting out of the lab before his sibling could change his mind. He loved Donnie, but the guy could get hyperfocused on one thing and forget about other important stuff - like food. Raph’s stomach growled, and he thought sadly about how his lunch had been interrupted. Oh well, at least Donnie was happy. And at least Raph still had that sandwich he’d never gotten to eat in the kitchen.
Wait.
—
In the living room, Leo and Mikey were locked in an intense match of Mario Kart.
“WHO ATE MY SANDWICH!?”
Leo glanced at his younger brother, whose eyes had gone wide and round.
“You realize if you run, I win this race?” Leo asked.
Mikey hesitated, eyes darting around like he was trying to decide if the match was worth it, and then nodded. When their big brother’s footsteps came stomping towards them from the kitchen though, Mikey lost his composure and ran. Even as Raph chased him all around the lair and eventually held him in a headlock to force him to listen to a lecture on respecting other peoples’ property, he held onto the remote, trying his best to stay in the game.
Chapter 3: Trachemys Scripta Elegans (Red-Eared Slider)
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Family fluff, mutant biology speculation
Read on Ao3
-----
Leo blinked at his brother. "Donnie?"
"Yes, Leon?"
"Why is there a pool in our living room?"
Donnie, who had been sitting in said pool with his arms slung over the edge where he was leaning back, perked up a bit. "You remember how I was testing our body temperatures for a little while?"
"Yes?" said Leo, unsure where this was going.
"Well, April and I ended up running some more tests yesterday, and we needed the pool for one of them since I needed to be completely submerged in water. And I did not want to go under the sewer water." Both brothers shuddered at the thought. "Anyway, since we have a pool now, I thought I might as well spend some time soaking in it. Softshells are a mostly aquatic species after all; it can only help."
"Sounds boring, but you do you," said Leo with a shrug.
"It's actually quite relaxing," Donnie said, stretching out a bit. "You should try it sometime."
"Nah, that'll be a hard pass from me. I was just about to go set up a new skate ramp anyway." Leo held up his skateboard demonstratively. "Catch you later, Dee. Enjoy your bath."
"It's not-" Donnie started, then sighed as his brother had already left the room. Leo never really was one to sit in a single place for too long. Although, now that Donnie thought about it, weren't sliders a highly aquatic species as well? Hmm… he'd have to do a little research.
—
"So," began Donnie that night at dinner, "I've been doing a bit of reading…"
Despite the innocent words, the Hamato family tensed up. They knew that too-casual tone of voice, and they knew it meant whatever came next had to do with one of them.
"...on red-eared sliders."
Everyone except Leo let out a sigh of relief, while the slider himself groaned.
"You're not going to make me do any weird experiments, are you?"
"No experiments on your brothers," said Splinter almost automatically.
"Wha- I wasn't going to!" At his brothers' disbelieving looks, Donnie protested, "I wasn't! …This time! I was just doing some reading." He pulled out his phone and opened it to the Wikipedia page he'd been looking at earlier. "According to this, red-eared sliders are one of the most invasive species in the world due to their quick maturity rate and other competitive advantages when looking for food and space."
"Ha!" laughed Mikey. "Competitive - that part sounds like Leo. Quick maturity, not so much."
"What! I'm totally mature!" Leo protested. "Dad even made me leader, I'm so mature."
Now it was Splinter's turn to laugh. "Ha! More like I made you leader so you would learn how to be more mature."
Leo gasped. "You wound me, o disbelieving family."
"Anyway," Donnie interrupted before the conversation could get even farther off track, "I looked up a care guide for sliders, which was easy to find since they're extremely common pets."
"This feels like an invasion of privacy," Leo grumbled.
Donnie completely ignored him and continued. "Adult sliders are supposed to have a diet of mainly vegetables."
Leo immediately hissed and protectively pulled his slice of pepperoni pizza toward himself.
Donnie rolled his eyes. "Calm down, I only said mostly. Besides, I'm sure you've got more leeway considering your digestive system is partially human. But you should still probably be eating more vegetables." He paused to frown thoughtfully. "Actually, I'm not entirely sure when the last time I saw you eat something green was."
"Just a few days ago!" said Leo. "I had that green Fruit Roll-Up."
"That doesn't count!" shouted his entire family immediately.
"Alright! Fine!" Leo groaned. "I'll… eat a lettuce or something. Maybe. Tomorrow."
Donnie sighed, but let it go. It was probably the best he was going to get out of his brother.
—
Leo glanced at the pool, which was still taking up space in their living room. The water sat in it, still and smooth like glass, just waiting for someone to touch it.
Nope. No way. At this point, it was just the principle of the matter.
—
Leo sheepishly held out his broken necklace to April, who just blinked as she took it.
"Leo. Buddy. This is the second stim necklace you've chewed through in a month."
"I know, I'm sorry."
"No, no, don't apologize, it's cool," April quickly assured him. "It's my fault; I thought the first one was a fluke. Now I know I've gotta get tougher ones for you."
"Thanks, April. I just… can't stop chewing on stuff, I don't know why."
"It's true!" Mikey chimed in from where he was sitting on the floor, taking his turn in Mario Party. "It's been that way ever since we were kids."
Something pinged in Donnie's brain just then. There was something he'd read in the slider care guide, but he hadn't put the pieces together until just now. He quickly pulled out his phone to skim through the guide again and try to find what he was looking for before his turn came up again in the game. There! He was right. (Obviously.)
Later that night, after two rounds of Mario Party, (both won by Mikey) Donnie stopped April right before she left to go home. "Hey, I was wondering if you could pick something up while you're out…"
—
Leo stared blankly at the bottle in his hand. "Calcium… gummies?"
April shrugged. "Donnie thought it might be good for you. Apparently, normal sliders start to chew things when they need more calcium. Anyway, here's your new necklace. Ready to head out?"
"Yeah, sure, just let me put these away." Leo walked into the kitchen and set the gummies on the counter, then paused. Hmm… why not? He tipped a single calcium gummy into his hand and then popped it into his mouth before leaving the bottle on the counter, to be forgotten until the next meal time.
—
Leo glared at the pool, which was directly in the path of his aimless midnight wandering. No. It didn't matter how curious he was, it was the principle.
But… if no one was around to see (especially Donnie) he could just deny that he'd ever touched the pool. Yeah. Loopholes.
—
Donnie let out a contented sigh as he took his first sip of coffee for the morning. Getting fresh vegetables was a bit of a challenge for the underground family, but it was worth it to see Leo drop his token complaining after the first bite of salad. The calcium supplements seemed to be helping too - Leo only chewed on his necklace when he needed to stim, instead of nearly all the time like before. All in all, Donnie's research had paid off, even if Leo insisted on being stubborn every chance he got.
Donnie walked through the living room, intending to get an hour or two of work done in his lab before the rest of his family woke up, but stopped dead at the sight before him. His brother, the stubborn, energetic slider who so far had refused to even get near the pool, had dozed off in it.
"Leo?"
He jumped a little, blinking dazedly before realizing where he was and who was there.
"Not a word," hissed Leo, standing up and grabbing for his towel.
And as much as Donnie wanted to do just a little bit of gloating, his brother's health came first. And if keeping his mouth shut was what it took for Leo to feel comfortable taking care of himself, then Donnie would shut his mouth, smile, and say, "Wouldn't dream of it."
By the time April’s first winter with the turtle brothers rolled around, she thought she had gotten used to all their eccentricities. Apparently, she had thought wrong.
One especially chilly day in early November, April arrived at the lair, only to find it the quietest she’d ever heard it.
“Guys?” she called out unsurely. There was no response. Venturing further in, she found every room she entered to be deserted. “Guys, if this is some kind of prank, you’re gonna regret it!” she said, a little louder. Still, nothing.
April was starting to get the feeling that this was some kind of horror movie setup, but she had to find the brothers, so she pressed on. Eventually, she decided to check their rooms, and ended up looking in Leo’s first. April let out a sigh of relief when she saw him gently snoring in his bed.
“Geez, Leo, don’t scare me like that.” She gently shook his shoulder. “Leo?”
After a few more seconds and a slightly more forceful shake, the slider blearily blinked awake and looked at April with unfocused eyes. “Mmmgh… hi.”
April frowned with worry. “What’s going on with you today, man?”
“Hmm… tired,” was Leo’s only response before he buried himself in his blankets again.
“Leo? Leo! Come on, man, don’t fall asleep on me again!”
“Ah, April,” said Splinter’s voice from the doorway, “I thought I heard you come in.”
“Splints!” April whirled around, never before so glad to see the old rat. “What’s going on with the guys?”
“Don’t worry,” Splinter assured her, “the boys always have a bit of trouble waking up after the first freeze. They’ll get up on their own eventually, and be tired for the rest of the day, but they’ll be fine.”
True to Splinter’s word, the brothers were all up within the next half hour. First was Raph, only a few minutes later, just as Splinter finished heating up water for hot chocolate.
“Hey, Raph,” greeted April.
The snapping turtle stared at his friend for a few moments, then gave a small nod. “Uh-huh.” He trudged over to a chair by the kitchen counter and accepted the mug of freshly mixed hot chocolate Splinter handed to him, downing most of it in one go.
Next was Leo, followed shortly by Mikey.
“Oh… hey, April,” said Leo slowly.
“Hi, Leo.”
“You’re so cool, April,” Mikey said suddenly.
She had to stifle a laugh as Leo nodded very seriously. “The coolest.”
“Aww, thanks, guys.”
Each of them was also given their own mug of hot chocolate, which they sipped at slower than Raph. A little bit later, and Donnie came stumbling out of his room. Splinter handed him a mug, and he seemed to perk up a bit.
“Oh,” said Donnie, in a voice that made it very clear he did not think that it was in fact better. Still, he took the cup and started drinking.
After a little while, when each of the kids had finished at least one cup of hot chocolate and all the turtles seemed a little more awake, April started talking. “So, I was going to ask you guys if you wanted to go out today, but I’m guessing now you’d rather stay in.”
The brothers all nodded in agreement. So April went around the lair, collecting all their spare blankets and pillows, and tossed them into a warm, comfy pile in front of the TV. She then picked out a movie, one they'd all seen enough times they could probably quote the whole thing from memory, and the five of them settled down for a relaxing day in. And if April ended up taking a whole lot of photos and videos of the turtle brothers, well, that was purely for blackmail purposes, and not at all because the boys being sleepy and silly was completely adorable.
Donnie looked up from the roller blades he was modifying for Cass, at April who had asked the sudden question. She didn't usually hang out in his lab, but the two of them hadn't spent much time together recently, so she had decided to stick around and chat for a bit.
April continued, "'Cause cold-blooded animals usually move slow at night since their muscles get stiff. But you guys go out at night all the time and it never seems to slow you down."
"Oh." April shrugged. "Okay." And she promptly forgot about the topic.
—
Two days later, and April was deep in the middle of a chess match with Leo. Sure, she was losing horribly, but she wasn't the kind of person to give up so easily. So when Donnie slammed open the lab door hard enough to make April jump and accidentally knock over half the pieces on the board, she groaned in disappointment.
"Heterothermic!" he yelled, seemingly to no one in particular.
"Um… hooray?" guessed Leo.
Donnie rushed over to April, shoving a stack of papers filled with line graphs and incomprehensible scribbles of writing towards her. "We're heterothermic," he repeated excitedly. "That means we have aspects of both warm and cold blooded creatures!" He jabbed a finger at a graph with a wavy line that meant absolutely nothing to anyone else in the room. "I've been tracking our body temperatures for the past few days, and when we're awake our bodies are able to maintain a near constant level of heat like warm-blooded creatures, but once we go to sleep our temperature begins to vary with the environment!"
April looked at Donnie's eye bags and rumpled gear. "Uh-huh… And when was the last time you went to sleep?"
"That's not important," he said flatly.
"Hang on," interrupted Leo. "How exactly were you tracking our temperatures this whole time?"
"Also not important."
"Wait - are you the reason I woke up freezing my ass off this morning!?"
"The point is," continued Donnie, completely ignoring Leo's question, "we are a perfect balance between turtle and human in this way. It's honestly fascinating and I can't believe I haven't looked this closely into mutant biology already."
"How about this," April offered, sweeping the abandoned chess pieces back into their container. "You go get a few hours of sleep, and I'll look up some cool turtle facts for you to test out when you wake up."
Donnie nodded excitedly and rushed back off the way he came, probably to neatly file away his research before going to bed.
April and Leo just stared after him with the feeling that this was only the beginning of a very large amount of chaos.
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After a power nap that lasted all of thirty minutes, Donnie was up and ready to get experimenting.
"'The spiny softshell turtle (Apalone spinifera) is a species of softshell turtle,'" April read from the Wikipedia article she had pulled up on her phone, only stumbling a little on the Latin name.
"Yes, yes, get to the good stuff!" Donnie said.
April rolled her eyes, but skipped ahead a bit. "Let's see… 'A. spinifera turtles are bimodal breathers, meaning they have the ability (to some degree) to perform oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange by breathing air or while breathing underwater.'"
Donnie blinked at his friend. "I can… breathe underwater?"
"Maybe?" April said unsurely. "Softshells are supposed to be mostly aquatic, but I'm not sure how your mutation could affect that."
Donnie grabbed April's hands and looked her in the eyes. "We need to test this out," he said very seriously, then wrinkled his nose a bit. "But not in the sewers. I do not want to breathe in sewer water."
—
One tactical borrowing of Splinter's credit card and a trip to Walmart later, and the two teens had acquired an inflatable kiddie pool large enough for Donnie to lay down in and be completely submerged. After the Herculean task of blowing up the whole thing with nothing but an old bike pump ("At least we didn't have to do it with our mouths," April pointed out) they filled the pool with fresh, clean water, and Donnie got in.
"So I just… breathe the water?" he asked, sitting half-submerged.
"Not exactly," said April, squinting at her screen as though it would make the words there suddenly make more sense. "According to the internet, softshell turtles can absorb oxygen through their mouth and throat, so… just breathe without opening your mouth, I guess?"
Donnie rolled his eyes. "Real specific." Nevertheless, he laid back so he was completely under the water. He pursed his lips, trying to imagine sucking in oxygen, but not feeling anything out of the ordinary. After about a minute, he started feeling the need for a breath of fresh air. Ready to take a break, Donnie stopped making the ridiculous duck lips he'd started doing partway through, but the second he relaxed he felt something weird. It was almost like a tiny bit of water was sliding in through the sides of his mouth, but no liquid was actually getting in. A second later and he felt the need for air easing up, almost as if he'd taken a breath, but his lungs never expanded.
Holy shit, it's working! Donnie was so surprised he opened his mouth to say something and accidentally got a mouthful of water. He came up sputtering and coughing, splashing water everywhere.
"Donnie!" groaned April, shaking off the water that had spattered on her. She looked at her turtle friend, who was still coughing slightly, trying to get the last few drops of water out of his burning lungs, and sighed. "So I guess water breathing is a no-go?"
Donnie looked up at her with wide eyes. "I've gotta try that again." And dunked his head back under the water.
—
"So," said April a few minutes later, laying across both cushions of the family's couch, "I'll put water breathing down as a yes."
"Real list or metaphorical list?" asked Donnie, sitting in a nearby chair after he had dried himself off a bit.
"Real list. Don't worry Dee, I'm writing this all down for you."
"Great," he said with a small smile. Data collection was just so satisfying. "What else you got?"
April hummed thoughtfully while scrolling down the Wikipedia page. "Geographic range, taxonomy, diet…"
"Diet?" Donnie perked up a bit. That could potentially be important.
"Mm-hm," said April, expanding that section on the website and skim-reading through it. "Apparently, wild softshells eat a little bit of both plants and animals, but it sounds like you could be healthy on an all-meat diet too."
"Interesting," Donnie murmured, already planning out several meat-based meals for himself.
"There's a picture of a turtle basking here," said April, turning her phone around so Donnie could see the image of the turtle laying in the sun. "Have you ever tried that?"
Donnie frowned slightly. "No. We don't really get the chance; we're usually holed up underground all day, and anytime we go out in the sun we've got to wear disguises."
"Hmm," April hummed thoughtfully. "Give me a minute." After a few moments of searching on her phone, she found what she was looking for. A little grin crossed her face. "Get your brothers, Dee. We're going on a little road trip."
—
"Are we there yet?"
"For the last time Michael, I don't know. April is the one with the directions and she refuses to tell me where we are going."
April laughed. "Don't worry Donnie, we're almost there. Turn right in a minute."
Donnie grumbled incoherently, but followed the direction nonetheless. They'd been driving for nearly twenty minutes, but none of them knew what was going on except their human friend. They'd officially left the city a while ago, and while they weren't exactly in the country, there was a lot more open space.
After a few more minutes of driving, April said, "Pull over here." Donnie did so, squinting through the windshield once he came to a stop.
"April?"
"Yes, dear Donatello?"
"There is literally nothing here."
"Exactly!" April threw open the door with a grin and hopped out onto the gravel shoulder of the road. "Come on, hurry, the sun's going down!"
The sun? Donnie's eyes widened as he put the pieces together, but his brothers still looked confused. They all pulled on their various hoodies and pants, then waded through waist-high grass together, leaving a slightly trampled trail from the turtle tank to somewhere in the middle of the field they'd stopped by. April stopped after a little while, stomped down a little circle, and said, "Alright, now take off your disguises and lay down here." Mikey, Leo, and Raph still looked confused, but they did as they were told.
"Ooh… this is really nice," said Mikey, sounding a bit surprised.
Donnie huffed. "You just wanted to see if we would bask, didn't you?"
"Yup," said April, popping the 'p' without a hint of remorse. "And even if you guys don't bask like normal turtles, laying in the sun is just really nice."
The five of them chatted for a little while, but the warmth of the evening sun on the brothers' skin soon made them tired. Eventually, they settled into a sleepy silence, simply enjoying each other's company until the sun went down.
As much as April had enjoyed her week-long vacation over spring break, she was excited to get back home. Not because she was excited to get back to school, (although that much seemed obvious to her) but because she would get to see her turtle friends again.
After their initial sluggishness in the first few days of winter, their bodies had seemingly gotten the memo and kicked their metabolism up a notch, and from then on they were running around with as much energy as ever before. And April missed that energy. Her family was great, but her life just wasn’t the same without the absolute chaos the turtles brought. Even though she’d known them for less than a year, she already couldn’t imagine life without them.
With these thoughts in mind, April practically skipped down the familiar path to the lair. “Hi, guys!” she greeted as she entered the living room. “I’m ba- whoah, are you guys okay?”
Mikey immediately popped up from where he was lying facedown on the couch, accidentally smacking his knees into Leo since his legs had been on top of his brother. “April! You’re back!” he said excitedly, completely ignoring Leo’s drawn-out noise of pain.
“Yeah - oof,” April grunted as Mikey tackled her in a hug, “but what happened to you guys while I was away? Your shells are all… weird.”
It was true - Mikey, Leo, and Raph’s shells all looked like they were coming apart. Each individual scute almost looked loose, like they were peeling off one by one.
“Oh, this?” said Leo, absentmindedly reaching back to scratch his shell. “Don’t worry about it, happens every spring.”
Raph reached over and smacked Leo’s hand down. “Stop that!” he scolded. “You gotta let it come off on its own. I thought we talked about this after Donnie’s baby tooth incident.”
April blinked in confusion before deciding she probably didn't want to know. Leo just scowled. “It’s so itchy, though!” he whined.
“Hmm. Sounds rough,” said Donnie, who had just stepped into the doorway.
He was immediately met with a chorus of "Shut it, Donnie!"
The softshell just stared at them all apathetically and took a long, slow sip of his drink. As he turned around to leave, though, April noticed the source of his brothers' frustration.
"He doesn't shed like you guys?"
"Ugh, no," groaned Mikey, climbing back into his previous place on the couch and kneeing Leo in the stomach again. "He doesn't shed at all and it's totally unfair!"
"That's not true!" Raph said. "He still sheds the outside of his shell, it just comes off all the time in little bits, like skin, and it's not as itchy as our shedding, and Leo so help me I will put the oven mitts on you again if you don't stop scratching."
Leo quickly folded his hands in front of himself and gave the most innocent smile he could manage.
Raph sighed, and turned back to April. "Anyway, sorry, but we're all a little grumpy 'cause of this, so we might not be too fun to hang out with today."
April shrugged. "That's alright, that's what I'm here for! Just let your big sister April cheer you guys up."
She floundered a little as the guys all looked at her in silence with their mouths open a little. Crud, did she overstep a boundary? Did she totally misread how close they all were? Until Mikey broke out into a huge grin.
"I always wanted a sister!" he said excitedly, hopping up for another hug. (Leo made a noise like a deflating balloon, but seemed resigned to his fate at this point.)
April laughed and patted Mikey's back, careful not to jostle any of his loose scutes too much. "Love you too, Mike. Now c'mon, help me get the board games and snacks."
They played for hours, until April absolutely had to go back home. Donnie crushed them all in Monopoly, and they retaliated by ganging up on him in Sorry. Leo ended up in the oven mitts about halfway through, and after he knocked over the board three separate times trying to move his pieces with his feet, Raph banned him from everything except rolling dice. Mikey ended up moving Leo's game pieces for him.
April smiled to herself as she walked back home from the lair. She’d visited the brothers because she missed them, but she had no idea how much her presence would be able to cheer them up. She'd never had siblings before, but when she called herself their big sister, it just felt… right. Despite all their differences, they were just one big, weird family. And April wouldn't have it any other way.
