Mutant killer turtles
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Alligator snapping turtle — not the Ganga kind, but fierce |
This one will turn your stomach: almost two decades ago, Ganga river management released $32M worth of flesh-eating turtles to deal with uncremated bodies released into the river.
Scavenger turtles that live in the Ganges River devour human corpses, making it possible for devout Hindus to deposit their loved ones’ remains in the waters they deem sacred. [Link]
… thousands of 3-foot long snapping turtles have been bred to devour the problem. Out of the original $140M allocated for Ganga cleanup, $32M alone [has] gone into turtle farms outside Benares. There are about 20,000 to 30,000 bodies cremated in Benares every year and thousands more float in from upriver.
Since 1990, 24,000 turtles have been released. The assistant manager of the farm says they are raised on a diet of dead fish from infancy, conditioning them to go for rotten flesh in the river, but not for living bodies. When people bring a body in a bag, the turtles charge up to the shore and sometimes drag the bag off. No bitings have been reported. [Link]
The flesh-eating turtles fell short of expectations:
Even the flesh-eating turtles released in the Ganga to munch the dead bodies have failed to make any significant impact. Released into a stretch of river at Varanasi in the late 1980s, poaching may have accounted for a better part of their promised appetite. Far from replicating the bio-control measure in other areas, the project seems to have fallen flat owing to increase in pollutant concentration vis-Ã -vis reduced flow in the river. [Link]
First man-killing elephants, now corpse-eating turtles. What’s next, bunnies with frickin’ laser beams? Disposing of corpses by freezing and shaking is starting to look better and better.
on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006, 12:57 pm in Animals, Environment › 
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i say we all get cremated and made into firecrackers or taken into space.
The flesh eating turtles is actually logical. As long as people believe that the Ganga is holy and will purify anything you put into it, it’s a serious source of health problems. You need some way to try to get the bodies out. Whether it works or not is an empirical question.
How about giant crocs instead?
You could use piranhas too, but you need something that won’t chomp on worshippers.
these guys are out of their mind. they have snappign turtles in the lakes here and they are the meanest bitches from hell. they growl and they snarl and they can bite off a finger or a weiner in a trice if you’re not careful - i’ve stopped skinny dipping. of course, in the cold lakes here, this is only a problem for the desis among us who are blessed with a pythschlong
HUmor me someone….just what is pythschlong?
Here’s a hint: it’s like a long, sharp sword.
msichana - it’s a python like schlong.
ok. i am liquid liquid with shame. your utter niceness has shamed me into cleaning up for the rest of the year at least. i live with animals in my real life. i should know more people like you.
To stay on topic, this is actually quite disturbing from an ecological perspective. the deliberate introduction of an alien species can have nasty ramifications. The cane toads of Australia are one example. I would post excerpts, but there is really no fluff in the linked article. these critters are poisonous and they eat and they eat and they can be 18 cm in length and 4kg in weight and each female produces 33 000 eggs. i guess we can be thankful the poachers are doing away with snapping turtles. such experiments just make me nervous.
it’s a fuckn good idea but wat bout the ppl?