Can turtles really breathe through their ass?
Can these turtles breathe through the “back door”? (Image credit: Shutterstock) Everyone knows that most mammals breathe through the mouth and nose. Frogs, meanwhile, can breathe through their skin. But what about turtles? How do these hard-shelled creatures get oxygen? You may have heard the strange rumor that turtles can breathe through their bottoms. But is this true? Technically, turtles don’t breathe through their derrières. That’s because turtles don’t really have “butts”; instead, they have a versatile opening known as the cloaca, which is used for sexual reproduction and egg laying as well as for excreting feces. However, they are involved in a process called cloacal respiration, which in a less technical sense can be interpreted as “butt-breathing”. During cloacal respiration, turtles pump water through their cloacal openings and into two sac-like organs known as bursae, which act like water. lungs , Craig Franklin, a wildlife physiologist at The University of Queenslan