Barry Dodge, age 10, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, for his question:

Is it true that some turtles live 100 years?

Yes there are records of centenarian turtles. In fact, it has been proved that many of our ordinary old box turtles live long enough to celebrate 100 birthdays. There is a report of a much older turtle who lived on the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. The people there claim that he lived in captivity for 152 years. They say he might have lived even longer, but in 1918 he met with a fatal accident.

Every animal species has a normal life span, a certain length of time it can ex¬pect to live, barring accidents. As a general rule, the larger animals live longer. A huge elephant can expect to reach the ale of 70, a tiny mouse has a life span of a year or so. But the sturdy old turtle breaks this general rule. He is a medium sized fellow and scientists think, that he has the longest life expectancy of all back boned animals.