Vegetarians: an experiment I did?

Question

Let me tell you about my experiment.
I have two Florida turtles. They should be omnivores. But they won't eat any sallad leaves. When I give them cheese, they can tell it's not meat. I mean, they eat meat with much more pleasure than they eat cheese. To them it makes a difference where they get their protein from.
Is this evidence enough that say cheese protein has a different structure than protein found in meat?

Answer 1

I'm not sure because my cats devour both cheese meat and anything made with egg with the same verocity.

Answer 2

Uh, no. They probably just don't like the taste of cheese.

Of course cheese protein is not the same as meat protein.It really doesn't matter what the protein structure is like. It's the amino acids in the proteins that matter. I am not familiar with a turtle's amino acid requirement, but the amino acids that a human requires are all found in plants.

Cats (felines) require taurine, which is not found in any plant. They cannot manufacture it. So they do need meat. Humans can make taurine.

No animal can absorb a protein. Proteins are gigantic macromolecules that need to be broken down into amino acids, regardless of whether they are from plants or animals.

Answer 3

Have you ever seen a turtle milk a cow and make cheese? Hmmm, you probably haven't. This study you did proves nothing. Turtles should just eat what they were meant to eat - things from the sea. They can recognize the cheese and meat from each other because their instinct tells them so.
This goes the same with humans. We should eat what we were meant to eat. I think all people should have some sort of meat in their diet. People who live in coastal and island environments should eat wild seafood. In landlocked places, people should eat cow, deer, chicken, etc. and vegetables that grow around the area. Ancestry determines what we should eat.

Answer 4

Well I'd be pretty confused if an alien keeper of mine (hypothetical of course) gave me the curdled and solid version of pig or walrus breast milk. In the wild your turtles may have eaten bits of meat (though I'd assume it would be made up of insects unless they know how to kill a whole cow) but I doubt they'd come across the curdled breast milk of another species.

Answer 5

No, it tells me that the cheese tastes different than the meat and that your turtles have a taste for meat. Unlike animals in the wild, animals kept domestically are prone to the same sorts of craving-driven unhealthy food choices as are human beings.

Answer 6

We like what we like. My cats are biological carnivores but they love rice milk ice cream, plain pasta, and one loves lettuce and mushrooms while the other 2 hate them.. It has nothing to do with the "structure of protein". It's personal taste. I eat vegetables but I still hate okra ;)

Answer 7

I would say it's evidence that cheese isn't meat, and they enjoy meat more. :) Even though I didn't know turtles ate meat at all...

Answer 8

I think it just means that your turtles don't like cheese.

Answer 9

In the wild, they would not be exposed to cheese, they would seek meat.

Answer 10

I agree with Alex M