Reptiles may not be as cuddly as cats or as dutiful as dogs, but reptile people love their lizards, snakes, and turtles. This week Ask Your Weird Animal Questions slithers into the world of reptiles, starting with one reader who shelled out some great questions about turtles.

Turtles don’t drown in their sleep because their metabolism is much slower than our own, says Jeffrey Lovich, a conservation ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey who has studied turtles for 30 years and probably loves them even more than other turtles do.

“They don’t have to breathe as often as us. It’s just life in slow motion,” Lovich says.

Metabolism is the set of chemical processes by which an organism functions. Turtle metabolism