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Rescued Australia turtle pooped plastic for 6 days: ‘Luck was on his side, he excreted all of it out’
- A tiny turtle rescued by a Sydney zoo took six days to pass all the plastic in his system. A veterinary nurse said he was lucky to survive
- Humans dump roughly 8 million tonnes of plastic in the world’s oceans every year. Plastic is projected to outweigh fish by 2050, according to the WWF
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A tiny turtle who was rescued by the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, pooped plastic for six days.
In a video on the Zoo’s Twitter page, veterinary nurse Sarah Male explains that the little turtle was rescued from a nearby beach with a back flipper “chomped” off.
But when he started to have bowel movements, “he defecated six days of plastic. No faeces came out, just pure plastic,” she said.
“Luck was on his side … he excreted all of it out” she said. He has now passed all the plastic in his system.
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Male said most injuries they see are caused by ingesting plastics and fishing lines.
According to the Taronga Zoo website, the hospital rehabilitates and releases over 80 marine turtles every year.
They also treat other native animals and have released over 50,000 animals back into the wild since they opened in the 1970s.
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