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Threatened: A Green-Haired Turtle That Can Breathe Through Its Genitals
In the debate over saving endangered species, it may be that some should get priority just because of how weird they are. Take the green-haired turtle. It breathes through its genitals. Not all the time — but after a long time underwater, an alternative way to get oxygen really helps.
The turtle is thirtieth on a new list of reptiles in trouble put out by the Zoological Society of London. The Edge of Existence program at the society looks at the evolutionary trees of animals that are endangered to determine which are most evolutionary distinctive. Previously, they put out lists for mammals and amphibians. The new list ranks reptiles on a combination of how distinctive and how endangered they are.
Rikki Gumbs and other researchers at the society who worked on the new list wrote a paper explaining how they arrive at the rankings, which was published in the journal PLOS One on Wednesday [open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194680] [DX].
Mr. Gumbs, who is pursuing a Ph.D. jointly at Imperial College London and the zoological society, said that evolutionary distinctiveness is not exactly the same as weirdness, but not far off. It is a measure of "how alone you are on the tree of life," he said. Those species do "tend to be weird and wonderful in the way they live."
(Score: 2) by YeaWhatevs on Friday April 13 2018, @07:33PM
Friday the 13th joke? Think so. That mohawk turtle is not a mary river turtle. I did not see any proper name given for the turtle elsewhere either. I didn't show up as #13 (hmmm, 13) on the new list of reptiles in trouble either, in fact there was no #13 because there were several ties for #11, and it wasn't any of those.