**** Info via Hope for Wildlife
When winter comes, snapping turtles may spend the entire time underwater brumating. Like hibernation, their body temperature drops until their metabolism is very slow. This means their heart rate and respiration rate drops, and they require less energy and oxygen to survive.
But they are still able to get oxygen, even though they stay submerged. This is because they can “breathe” through their butt!
The technical term for this butt-breathing is cloacal respiration. Turtles have a cloaca, which is essentially their butt, that has a lot of blood vessels that they can draw oxygen from the water through. By moving water over these areas they can kind of breathe underwater!
