Do mutant turtles exist?

COWABUNGA!

In the movies, Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael fight crime from their den in the New York City sewers. It is a stretch but there is some kernel of truth in their back story.

National Geographic reports that red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans), the most popular freshwater turtle in the American pet trade, is taking over waterways in the Big Apple, such as Morningside Pond. Native to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, they are bred on an industrial scale and are sold wholesale to pet retailers.

Red-eared sliders are consistently named one of the world’s hundred worst invasive species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature because when pet owners discover they need big tanks and expensive filtration systems, and can live for up to 50 years, they often dump them outside – where they are becoming a nuisance and are crowding out native species, creating harmful algal blooms in local waterways, and possibly exposing humans to salmonella.

Freshwater turtles are called terrapins in South Africa, and while red-eared sliders are sold through the internet into the pet trade in the country, it is illegal to do so. The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment reports that it is an offence in terms of the Alien and Invasive Species Regulations to breed or sell the Trachemys species.