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Terrapin

Index of animals with the same common name From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Terrapins or water tortoises are a group of several species of aquatic reptile of the order Testudines living primarily in fresh or brackish tidal waters, but have the clawed feet of tortoises and not flippers of marine turtles.[1][2] In American English, they are referred to as marsh, pond, or tide-water turtles, with some species called pond sliders as well. Whereas tortoises are almost strict herbivores and fructivores — largely feeding on flowers, grasses, leaves, and fallen fruit — a great many terrapins are mainly carnivorous — largely feeding on amphibians, arthropods, freshwater fish, and molluscs — though some are herbivores. Terrapins are identified primarily with the taxonomic family Emydidae,[1][2] but do not form a single taxon and may not be closely related, with some belonging to the families Geoemydidae, Pelomedusidae, Podocnemididae, and Chelydridae. Though primarily aquatic, terrapins do relatively frequently come to land for many reasons, but particularly to warm up by basking in the sun.

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Etymology

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Diamondback terrapin

The name "terrapin" is derived from the word in the Algonquian languages: torope[3] that referred to the species Malaclemys terrapin, the diamondback terrapin. It appears that the term became part of common usage during the colonial era of North America and was carried back to Great Britain. Since then, it has been used in common names for freshwater species of Testudines in the English language, but is not as widely used in North America.[4]

Terrapins gave their name to a colloquialism for the War of 1812 — 'the Terrapin War' — because, through the blockade, the United States was shut up tight in its shell like a terrapin against the British invasionary forces.[5]

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Species

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The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species — also known as the 'IUCN Red List' or 'Red Data Book' — inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological species,[6] place most species terrapins as "threatened with extinction" — between vulnerable species and critically endangered.

Terrapin species include:

More information Family, Genus ...
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1994 IUCN Red List categories (ver. 2.3) for species not reassessed since 2001


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See also

References

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