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Here I'm holding Malaysian soft-shelled turtle. Its scientific name is dogania subplana. It
is found in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. This soft-shelled turtle lives
in rocky, shallow, fast running streams, which makes it different than most turtles that
usually live in lakes and ponds. It often hides beneath irregular rocks and large stones
in the stream bed. Dogania is a soft-shelled species, meaning their shell is very pliable.
It has an oval carapace that can reach about ten inches in length, you can see that it
doesn't have a hard plastron, and it's actually very highly vascularized. And they can actually
respire through this portion of their shell. Their carapace doesn't have any of the bony
scales or scutes that we're used to on normal turtles. And you can see that they are highly
adapted to their aquatic environments, as their feet are shaped like flippers and have
these very long claws. Eehh. The plastron is so flexible you can actually make them
close their shell entirely to hide from predators. Their mating begins in June and lasts 'til
July, and they lay three to four clutches of eggs. There are usually three to seven
of them, and they're hard-shelled eggs. They prey mostly on insects such as worms, snails,
they'll eat clams, spiders, frogs, and even tadpoles. A very interesting fact about this
specific turtle is that it is the only turtle in the world that doesn't have any of its
bones fused in its body, making it very flexible and it can fit under irregular rocks that
most species can't, creating its own specific ecological niche.