Meet the soft shelled turtle who pees through its mouth and breathes through its balls

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Meet the soft shelled turtle who pees through its mouth and breathes through its balls

This is one of those science stories you may have heard by now, one that I’ve been meaning to post for days, but somehow never got around to. Anyway, a soft-shelled turtle from China can urinate from its mouth and breath through an opening in its genitalia. That would be awesome if people could do that.

To find out exactly where turtle urine comes from, researchers purchased Chinese soft-shelled turtles from a local market, thus saving the reptiles from their more common destiny as a soup. Nothing comes for free, though, and in return for the timely rescue, the turtles were obliged to turn over the secret of how they pee, not unlike a gnarlier version of the wish granting fish of folklore. The turtles were taken out of the water where they’re most comfortable and provided with nothing but a small puddle. While the puddle was too minute for them to dive into, it did provide a place for them to dunk their heads, which they did for as long as 100 minutes at a time, during which they were not only excreting urea, but also rinsing their mouths, because thank god for that.

When the team measured the urea levels in the puddle after the turtle’s head dunk, they found the water was overflowing with turtle pee. These observations were followed up by genetic tests that found the turtles express the gene for urea excretion in their mouths, confirming suspicions that the turtles are, in fact, totally gross.

While soft-shelled turtles do pass some urea through their kidneys like you and me, it’s very little, reaching about 6% of the total urine the animals produce. The rest of it leaves through their mouths. This novel method of taking a leak isn’t quite a unique take on the phrase “hitting the head.” Several varieties of fish are known to excrete urea through their mouths in a similar fashion, but this is the first time the behavior has been observed in a reptile.

It’s not yet understood why the turtles would develop this adaptation, but the research team suspects that the trait helps turtles to thrive in the brackish, undrinkable water they tend to call home. Fresh water is a hot commodity in these areas, and excreting urea through the mouth means the turtles can just rinse their mouths rather than drinking, cutting down on the amount of water they have to consume.

Research abstract here

Via