31 AUGUST 2018

Pi on Floor Front View

The title of this post is exactly what it is going to be about! Turtle butt! :)

I mentioned in an earlier post that reviewing Pi Cam videos on a daily basis is not a difficult task, mainly because Pi does not move too much when she is basking on her platform. In most of the videos, I see Pi’s right side since she typically faces towards the window instead of the wall. However, when Pi faces towards the wall, her bum is pointed towards the Pi Cam!

In the beginning when Kelvin and I were testing out the Pi Cam, Pi spent a significant amount of time facing away from the camera. Maybe she was uninterested or weirded out by this strange, new apparatus attached to her tank. At that time, I was slightly concerned that the Pi Cam videos would be useless, because I saw only Pi’s bum in over 4 hours of footage. Boring! However, Pi has learned to ignore the Pi Cam over time, so it was a relief when I finally saw some interesting actions instead of Pi’s bum.

For the days where all I saw was Pi’s bum on the Pi Cam, I decided to take screencaps and stitch together a collage. The below image was the result.

Turtle Butt Collage

While I was collecting these screencaps, I thought of a question: What direction does Pi curl her tail to most often? Left or right, or straight down the middle? This question is simple to answer since I have the relevant data from the screencaps: Date, time, and the direction of Pi’s tail curl. I started tracking this data on a spreadsheet so that I can do analysis on it as I gather more data points.

Why do data analysis? Because it is fun and engaging, especially if it is about your pet! I have been working with data for over 9 years at my job, and studied science and quantitative subjects (biology, chemistry, and economics) in college, so it is almost second nature for me to approach questions through observation and analysis.

Here is a quick summary of turtle butts as of July and August 2018:

  • 12 data points gathered (the 12 screencaps above)
  • Pi curled her tail to the left 75% of the time (9 out of 12)
  • Pi curled her tail to the right 25% of the time (3 out of 12)

A turtle typically curls its tail close to its body when it is scared or distressed, but they also sometimes curl their tails while sleeping (which was the case for Pi in these Pi Cam screencaps). However, is there any meaning or significance to the direction of a turtle’s tail curl? I am not sure. Does a turtle have a preference/favorite or dominant direction in tail curling? This is another interesting question that I do not have an answer to, and I wonder if there are any academic papers or publications written that are related to this question. Perhaps this warrants some research. Based on the data so far, Pi seems to like curling her tail to the left!