Rare, bum-breathing Mary River Turtle finally surfaces

The rare Mary River Turtle has the amazing ability to stay underwater for hours — by breathing through its bum.

TWAM 27 June 2015

Looks aren’t everything, right? So once you stop laughing at the Mary River Turtle, consider this: it has the amazing ability to stay underwater for hours by breathing through its bum.

Not like a snorkel — don’t be ridiculous — but by extracting oxygen from water that it draws in through gill-like organs in its cloaca, which is biology’s polite word for clacker. See, who’s laughing now?

Just as remarkable is how it entered the scientific literature, thanks to Sydneysider John Cann. The 77-year-old is an unusual turtle expert: an autodidact who worked as a power-line rigger, and did snake-handling shows at La Perouse on Sundays as a sideline. In 1965, he saw some baby “penny turtles” with very long tails in a local pet shop and knew immediately they were new to science. The shop owner refused to reveal where they came from, though — so Cann decided to find out himself. It led to a 25-year obsession in which he snorkelled every Top End river from the Jardine in Cape York to the Daly near Darwin. (What about crocs? “I didn’t think about them,” he says. “I was lucky. I wouldn’t even wash my hands in the Daly River now.”)

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He discovered six new turtle species along the way, but his real quarry evaded him. “It was driving me mad,” he laughs. The reason it was so hard to find? This endangered animal, pictured in a shot from the 2015 ANZANG Nature Photographer of the Year competition, is found only in the Mary River north of Noosa.

And that’s where, one day in 1990, Cann finally found one on a log. How did he feel? “Ecstatic. You have no idea.” He formally described the species, naming it Elusor macrurus (Elusor means “most elusive”). After his epic search, it’s no wonder he has a soft spot for it. We might think it has a face that only a bum-breathing mother could love, but he says: “I think it’s beautiful.”