# Turtle butts

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turtle-butts/724546>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [July 8, 2015, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turtle-butts/724546 "2015-07-08T04:18:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turtle-butts/724546/1 "2015-07-08T04:18:25Z")

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[_Is it true turtles breathe through their butts?_](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2325/is-it-true-turtles-breathe-through-their-butts)

Yuck …

Just … Yuck …

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**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turtle-butts/724546/2 "2015-07-08T07:31:21Z")

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One of the questions Cecil prints at the beginning of the column isn’t so original:

> [@](#):
>
> \*Dear Cecil:
> 
> When turtles put their heads in their shells, what happens to their spines? Do they buckle or contract?
> 
> — Daniel Calarese\*

The question comes straight out of Vonnegut’s _Cat’s Cradle._ In one chapter, Dr. Felix Hoenikker, nuclear scientist extraordinaire, suddenly asks this question apropos of nothing, and then completely loses interest in his important nuclear research and instead gets completely obsessed with studying turtles.

> [@Cat's Cradle](#):
>
> ```
> "Angela was twenty-two then. She had been the real head of
> 
> ```
> 
> the family since she was sixteen, since Mother died, since I was  
> born. She used to talk about how she had three children–me,  
> Frank, and Father. She wasn’t exaggerating, either. I can remember  
> cold mornings when Frank, Father, and I would be all in a line in  
> the front hall, and Angela would be bundling us up, treating us  
> exactly the same. Only I was going to kindergarten; Frank was  
> going to junior high; and Father.was going to work on the atom  
> bomb. I remember one morning like that when the oil burner had  
> quit, the pipes were frozen, and the car wouldn’t start. We all  
> sat there in the car while Angela kept pushing the starter until  
> the battery was dead. And then Father spoke up. You know what he  
> said? He said, ‘I wonder about turtles.’ 'What do you wonder about  
> turtles? Angela asked him. ‘When they pull in their heads,’ he  
> said, ‘do their spines buckle or contract?’  
> "Angela was one of the unsung heroines of the atom bomb,  
> incidentally, and I don’t think the story has ever been told.  
> Maybe you can use it. After the turtle incident, Father got so  
> interested in turtles that he stopped working on the atom bomb.  
> Some people from the Manhattan Project finally came out to the  
> house to ask Angela what to do. She told them to take away  
> Father’s turtles. So one night they went into his laboratory and  
> stole the turtles and the aquarium. Father never said a word about  
> the disappearance of the turtles. He just came to work the next  
> day and looked for things to play with and think about, and  
> everything there was to play with and think about had something to  
> do with the bomb.

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**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2015, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turtle-butts/724546/3 "2015-07-08T14:24:20Z")

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Plagiarism saves time …