This very popular photo captured by Timothy C. Roth from Task Force Turtle portrays a snapping turtle that emerged after hibernation carrying the “earth” on its back

Galileo was wrong, and ancient cosmologists were correct: this turtle carries the entire world on its back.

When the aforementioned image was shared on Twitter earlier this week, Live Science noticed it and contacted Task Force Turtle to learn more. The full story turns out to include drugs, mysteries, incredible herpetological memories, butt gas, and possibly the ability to hold one’s turtle-like breath for months on end.

For more than a decade, Task Force Turtle, a collaboration of herpetologists and undergraduate students from Washington College and other local institutions, has been obsessively tracking snappers and painted turtles in Maryland swamps. The common snapping turtle in the picture is one of many snappers and painted turtles discovered by Task Force Turtle.

This snapping turtle is carrying the “earth” on its back. (Image credit: Timothy C. Roth)

“All of our turtles, thousands of them now, have been fitted with radio transmitters in the summertime when they’re making these movements [toward their winter mud holes],” said Aaron R. Krochmal, a biology professor at Washington College and one of the researchers who started the project. We literally “follow” them around the clock.

He claims that the turtles in the area are fascinating because they allow scientists to thoroughly investigate a migration. Year after year, turtles travel the same route from their summer stomping grounds to their winter hideouts—tightly crowded, underground mud-holes where they can wait out the cold.

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