Helping Aubie this week is Dr. Craig Guyer, professor of biological sciences, with AU’s Colleges of Sciences and Mathematics.

Dear Olivia and John,

All living turtles have jaws that lack teeth. However, turtles still are able to eat because of two features. In some forms, such as our local chicken turtles and soft-shell turtles, the animal extends its head and neck toward a prey item and then rapidly opens its mouth and expands its neck, sucking the prey item into the mouth before the prey can escape.
In other forms the turtle takes advantage of the fact that the bones of the upper and lower jaws of all turtles are very sharp and line up so that they can cut like scissors when a turtle opens and closes its mouth. This allows some turtles to slice their food. Food can be plant material, as in the gopher tortoise, pond slider and river cooter of Alabama, or animal material, as in the snapping turtles and map turtles of our state.
Once the food item is in the mouth, some species can crush the food between the bones of the upper and lower jaw; map turtles do this with the snails and clams that make up their diet. But most turtles simply swallow the food without chewing it. This does not seem to limit their diets much since among the approximately 280 species of living turtles, we find species that eat leaves, fruit, mushrooms, insects, snails, crayfish, fish and even jelly fish. And so, while a lack of teeth might seem to us to be a hindrance to eating, it does not seem to have affected turtles much.

Thanks for your question,
Aubie and Dr. Guyer