10/12/2005 12:27:00 PM|||The Zen Master|||So, apparently that was not just any old sea turtle but actually a leatherback one, a species on the verge of extinction. I stole this picture from the internet, as I don't have an underwater camera, and there was certainly no place to buy one on this island in the middle of the South China Sea, the only store on which sold batik sarongs and sunblock. I gleaned some awesome facts about the leatherback from the site linked to above and thought I'd share them here as well:

A leatherback's favorite food is jellyfish. They even have a special notch in their beak to help puncture the man-o-war jellyfish.

Leatherbacks in Costa Rica lay two kinds of eggs: yolked and yolkless.

The temperature in the nest determines if a hatchling will be a boy or a girl.

A leatherback's shell is covered by a leathery skin.

The "tears" that turtles "cry" are just their way of shedding excess salt.

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