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Truthfully I don't know if turtle's white meat, red meat, or something else, but it is edible. Specifically I'm thinking about giant tortoises after watching Galapagos on National Geographic Channel a few days back. Apparently back in the day sailors would take them on ship and turn them on their backs to keep them out of the way. The tortoises could then live for months without eating or drinking. Thus it seems to me that on a journey to Mars you wouldn't even need to bring food or water along for the tortoises or at least not much. Bring along a male and female pair of breeding age or just some females with frozen sperm for artifical insemination. AI would allow you to build a large and diverse genetic base quickly, but on the other hand these giant tortoises tend to be from islands so inbreeding is a bit less of a worry as they've likely already done it before in the past due to low population thus removing a lot of the bad genes from the gene pool.
So why wouldn't a growing Mars colony want some tortoises around for food? One danger to my mind is that these tortoises are actually fairly powerful so you'd need to reinforce their pen or the walls of the place they're living. At the same time the things take about 25 years to sexual maturity if I remember correctly. Thus it could take a while even at a breakneck speed to get a large enough population to start eating more than say one or two a year. Of course given a lack of predators you should have a very high survival rate of hatchlings. I'm not real sure how much food and water they'd need. Given their slow reptilian metabolism though one would suspect it'd be less than a similarly sized mammal, but of course space will be at a premium for a very long time in any event. Perhaps they'd be amiable to eating plant parts humans can't or want which would cut down a space a bit.
Some side benefits. First it'd give the humans a pet, and given that they're going to be around for about 25 years anyways getting attached won't be as much concern as it would if you were raising cows and slaughtering them after a year or two. Second the shells could likely be fashioned into some low tech tools like bowls or shovels. Third the skin could perhaps be used to make leather goods.
Just an idea. I don't know much about this sort of thing so hopefully NASA, the ESA, or someone here hasn't aleady compiled a list of why this is a horrible idea.
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I think that it could work well if you can get high reproduction rates. I am not sure how fast they grow there. Considering that Giant tourists can live over 100 years it might not be as practical as one might think.
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Giant tourists can live over 100 years...
Someone should warn the ISS! :shock:
Also, as someone who has repeatedly enjoyed it, I can answer one of X's questions: Turtle is white meat. However, I would recommend something other than tortoise. Many freshwater turtles are also vegetarian and tend to grow faster. They also hibernate, making them easier to ship.
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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I think that it could work well if you can get high reproduction rates. I am not sure how fast they grow there. Considering that Giant tourists can live over 100 years it might not be as practical as one might think.
Yeah that's the thing isn't it? Mankind has traditionally avoided trying much agriculture on that sort of a time scale. Even most trees start bearing fruit in a fraction of that time I think. It's a bit like raising elephants except they don't cost as much to feed. On the upside if it is well managed after you get over that initial two decade or so hump you can harvest some every year, but at the same time by then your turtle farm has probably reached its carrying capacity in one way or another so you're going to be eating a lot of turtle eggs or young turtles to preserve your tortoises of reproductive age.
The freshwater turtles sound like the best option right now. It'd be on a more normal timescale for sure. Being from the mainland would increase the dangers of inbreeding though, but with the lighter weight you could probably bring several founder females and plenty of AI samples. I guess you'd want to choose based on clutch size, time to breeding age, and time to adult size. Any other qualifications or necessary traits that I'm missing?
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