Man operates on dead turtle, delivers seven eggs

File image of a hatchling. Twitter/@EricCMartens1

A scientist became the guardian angel for hatchlings as he performed a C-section on their dead mother turtle to save their lives. The story unfolded a few months back when Gut Microbiome scientist Eric C Martens encountered a turtle that was killed in his neighbourhood by a reckless driver. The scientist understood that the now deceased mama turtle was looking for a place to lay her eggs, Martens brought its body to his home and performed a C-section surgery on the turtle.

This story starts sad but has a happy ending: In early June I got out of my car coming home from work to help a turtle cross the road in our neighborhood, only to find that a careless driver had already hit and killed her. Figuring she was searching for a place to lay eggs, (1/4) pic.twitter.com/5LlJrck74B

— Eric C Martens (@EricCMartens1) August 1, 2021

He was able to take out seven eggs from the mother turtle that the scientist then placed in a substrate for incubation. Two months later, the eggs started hatching on 2 August as Martens shared the development on Twitter. At the time of Martens’ tweet, two eggs had hatched while three more were on their way to enter the world. To give other Twitter users a perspective about the size of the newborn turtles, Martens placed a US quarter next to one of the baby turtles. It can be seen that the newborn animal is barely the size of the coin. He hopes that the turtles will go back to the pond where their mother lived.

I forgot to note that they are crazy tiny! pic.twitter.com/zSXRJSP2Y5 — Eric C Martens (@EricCMartens1) August 1, 2021

The scientist has received thousands of likes and retweets on his tweets. Several people have also commented, appreciating Martens. A Twitter user said that Martens has won the kindness award while another one thanked the scientist for doing this.

You win the kindness award. Great thinking and caring. She lives on through these babies.

— Robin Birdsong (@rbirdsongTX) August 2, 2021

Another commenter also pointed out that the mother turtle was lucky that she came across Martens, who is a reptile lover.

Somehow mother turtle was lucky to cross the path of a reptile lover 🐢🐍

— Bernard Henrissat (@BHenrissat) August 1, 2021