Take a good long stare into this jagged hole of doom.

With hundreds of giant spikes for teeth and a small leathery tongue at the base, this mouth is the stuff of nightmares.

Especially with the creature’s apparently blood-stained jaws finishing off the look.

But can you guess the animal? The answer may surprise you. Here’s another angle to help…

This mouth actually belongs to the leatherback sea turtle, the third largest living reptile in the world – AND the largest turtle. The teeth, which resemble dozens of stalactites, are called ‘papillae’ and line the turtle’s mouth all the way down its oesophagus and to its gut.

The leatherback turtle isn’t the flesh-eating carnivore one might expect either, because it only eats jellyfish.

The pointy, backward-facing papillae are to help it eat a large number of the slippery jellies by preventing them from escaping by floating out the back of its mouth. An elongated oesphagus, which loops around the stomach and back, also helps to process the jellyfish.

This means the leatherback turtle can handle any kind of jelly from the huge Lion’s Mane to smaller swarms.

But the turtle, which is endangered and facing extinction, can’t tell the difference between plastic bags and jellyfish.

Which is why this #worldturtleday people need to educate others (and themselves) to be more careful with their rubbish.

Source:
courtesy of METRO

by Amy Willis

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