Tedd Bell, age 13, of Tucson, Ariz., for his questions

Does a turtle shed his skin?

A turtlets shell is an adaptation of his skeleton ands like your he has the same skeleton all his life. It grows with him. In some cases, a turtle and his shell grow quite fast. When newly hatched, the cute baby slider turtle is only an inch and a half long. In a year, the junior slider has almost doubled his size, shell and all. The curved upper shell of a turtle is actually his ribs and backbone fused together with plates of bone. It is called. the carapace. The flat, underside of the shell is fused together with the breastbone and is called the plastron. The turtle, like the insects, wears his skeleton on the outside and manages very well, indeed.