Leatherback Sea Turtle Facts – Size, Appearance, and Diet

Editor’s Note: The following article was written by STPS member and high school student Shreya Reddy.

Leatherback Sea Turtle Facts – Size, Appearance, and Diet

By Shreya Reddy

Size and Appearance

The leatherback is known as the biggest sea turtle species. On average, females weigh 800 pounds (360 kilograms) and males weigh 1,000 pounds (453 kilograms). Both genders range from 4-8 feet in length (1.2 – 2.4 meters).

Leatherback sea turtles are cold-blooded reptiles that can act like warm-blooded mammals like whales when diving into deep frigid depths. Specifically, they can dive deeper than whales.

Leatherbacks are classified as dark, streamlined, scaleless turtles with long, broad flippers. Their top sides range from slate black to blue-black with random pale splotches, and their undersides are splotched equally with black and white. Their bodies are barrel-shaped, elongated into a streamlined teardrop. On their shells, they have five ridges which narrows into a short-pointed caudal projection. They are broad-shouldered and have a tear-drop-shaped torso, which powers their massive fore-flippers.

A leatherback’s head is large and triangular, and the mouth is shaped into a short beak. Leading the upper jaw, a deep notch separates two fanglike cusps and the lower ends forward with a sharp point that fits inside the upper jaw. During nesting season, leatherbacks tend to develop irregular pink spots (splotches) at the crown of their heads.

Diet

Leatherback sea turtles grow on a diet of clear, watery, jellylike animals. They eat so many jellyfish that it makes up for the lack of nutritional quality that it serves. This explains why they are the biggest and grow the fastest based on their diet. As Blair Witherington said, “This is like an Olympic weightlifter surviving on only cucumbers.”

They have many adaptations that allow them to consume their prey. One adaptation is their upper and lower jaw cusps which pierces and holds the most elusive jelly blobs. For larger bite snacks, their scissor-like jaws come in handy and can slice larger jellies into smaller pieces. This feeding method benefits very small leatherbacks who can nibble off pieces of jellies bigger than their size.

Another adaptation is the leatherback’s ability to pre-process slippery prey once they claim it with its mouth. This is helped by rows of stiff, overlapping, inch-long, cone-shaped papillae that line the complete length of the turtle’s esophagus and point toward its stomach. The grip of these backward-pointed spines with strong throat muscles, allow a leatherback to wring out its food and expel the excess seawater they might consume.

Limiting seawater ingestion with each meal is vital because excess salt is toxic to turtles. Leatherbacks and other marine animals struggle to make themselves less salty than their surroundings.

Source Material:

“Leatherback Sea Turtles” on the SEE Turtles.org website – https://www.seeturtles.org/leatherback-turtle?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-9XP4Z2fgwMVJ4JaBR2xAQH7EAAYASAAEgKXMfD_BwE.