They can breathe through the cloaca while in the water.
The Australian continent is interesting for its special inhabitants, including Elusor macrurus turtles with bright green hair.
The fact is that the turtles from the Mary River have one feature: they can breathe through the cloak, being in the water.
Well, thick green hair is not hair at all, but algae. They cover the head, and sometimes the shell of the turtles. Elusor macrurus also has a mustache, and males have a very long tail, the purpose of which scientists still cannot explain.
Green-haired inhabitants of the Mary River are an ancient species. For comparison, people separated from other primates about 10 million years ago.
Now this species is under threat of disappearance, and one of the reasons is precisely the trade in turtles.
And the second reason is that these inhabitants of the Australian continent have reached puberty for a very long time: about a quarter of a century between birth and the first nesting.
