Can turtles ever take off their shell?

A turtle's spine/backbone is attached internally to its shell - so to take off the shell is to rip the backbone out of the body and kill the turtle.

A turtle shell consists of two parts - the carapace (the upper convex shell) and the plastron (the lower concave shell) which are joined together by two connecting bone bridges.

The backbone is attached to the the carapace at the top, and to the ribs on the bottom sides.

As a result, most of the length of the turtle's backbone is fixed in place as one bone! with only the tail and neck retaining flexibility, so when Donatello, Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo partied, they definitely tried to avoid dancing.