#turtle facts

Most turtles arenot even named larry

Turtle Biology! (All hc’s are based on facts about their species of turtle!)

They all brumate (hibernation for reptiles) a little bit. Donnie and Leo have it the worst. It mostly entails them sleeping a lot when it gets super cold. 

While they really enjoy human food, each of them enjoy turtle food to a degree (Mikey-least, Donnie-most)

Donnie

Ate a frog for $25 once and liked it and now he freaks Mikey out with it 

He can swim the fastest, but sucks at running

When he was very, very little he bit Raph hard enough to draw blood

His bite is just a powerful as Raph’s but he doesn’t brag about it because he would never put something unclean in his mouth (w/o adequate compensation)

Leo 

Ate a frog for $5 once and liked it so he and Donnie gang up on Mikey to freak him out 

He likes nonverbal communication a lot and prefers it when he’s in a mood 

He sunbathes and tries to convince the others to come with him 

When it gets super cold he and Donnie bundle up for what Donnie calls “The Brumation Period” and Leo calls “The Super Nap” and they just sleep on the couch together for like three straight days

Raph

He once bit through a table leg 

When the temperature gets crazy he gets picky and really fussy

When it gets too cold he takes long naps in his room and enjoys alone time all cuddled up. He leaves the door cracked so that he can still hear his family

He does that thing when swimming where he’ll grab peoples ankles underwater  (will cry if someone grabs his ankles)

Has a great sense of smell 

Mikey 

Was terrified of water growing up and didn’t learn how to swim until very recently

Used to tease Donnie that he could go in his shell so effortlessly while Donnie couldn’t at all (before his battle shell)

When brumation time rolls around Mikey’s room becomes a total mess and he just collects all kinds of garbage that he surrounds himself with 

Found a fact floating around that red ear sliders like to sit on soft shells :> so this is may take on that fact. Whenever Donnie does the "shrimp back" thing his back ends up hurting so Leo offers to sit on his shell as a type of relief/pressure stim. And with a pillow in between so he doesn't hurt Donnie's shell :]

Here's the original image lol

So, interestingly, when blood is drawn from a turtle, it's usually drawn from the neck. Close above the shell, jugular vein area.

And sometimes from the same spot right above the tail. That vein is called the coccygeal vein, or the tail vein.

However, the ninja turtle boys are mutants, and anthropomorphic turtles, so their anatomy may be more similar to a human in terms of vascular and arterial (veins and arteries), so elbow/wrist may be more appropriate.

Or, secret third option, an in-between. Like the shoulder.

Honestly I'm not sure it even matters since we'd have no way of knowing for sure in the case of mutant humanoid turtles, but I don't think the shoulder would work realistically in any case here due to the difficult vein and artery placement there.

(I couldn't find any good vascular maps for a turtle so have a weird minor-detail one from a medical journal about sea turtle anatomy. Note: some internal structures vary between turtle species due to environment and body shape, but only slightly.)

(Also note: there are two separate pictures due to the labeling. It's the same map, but there's so many things to label they had to make two.)

So, just for funsies, I thought you might like to know where they draw from with actual non-mutated turtles. Just in case.

Here's some terminology and other facts if you ever wanna use that:

The veins typically sought out for blood drawing in turtles are the jugular and tail vein, but a couple others may work. This is typically because most other drawing sites, like the arms, have a much higher chance of lymph contamination in the sample. The jugular is the least likely site to give this contamination.

It's not recommended to try to access the jugular when the head is in the shell, nor is it recommended to attempt to get the head out of the shell for the sample. In those cases, sedation is the preferred method. Mostly to not hurt the animal.

The tail vein is the second best option, and can be approached ventral or dorsal (from underneath or from the top).

If a turtle keeps their head in their shell and sedation is not an option, the subcarapacial sinus is used. It lies inside the carapace at the level of the cervical vertebrae. So basically right at the top above the neck at the juncture between the neck and the shell.

(medical article snippet below)

Here's another visual reference for the preferred spots

Hope this helped! Or if you don't feel like going through this much trouble for your "just for fun" comic, I hope you enjoyed learning something new! 😊

Woah! Thank you for this! I will definitely keep this in mind for the future of this project and/or any other turtle projects I do.

Facts and Information