Description Tortoises have have an exoskeleton AND an endoskeleton, meaning that besides having their outer shell, they also have an interior skeleton like we do. The shell on a tortoise is actually 60 different bones connected together. A tortoise is a turtle, but not all turtles are tortoises. When you get a group of tortoises together, it's called a creep. Maybe that's because tortoises are thought to be slow moving?