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Brian Owens

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Watch a baby sea turtle being hypnotised so we can weigh it

Brian Owens · June 24, 2016 ·

Baby sea turtles are an energetic bunch. As soon as they emerge from their sandy nests they scramble down the beach and swim out to sea. This frantic burst of activity helps the turtles evade predators, but it can be a real headache for researchers who want to gather measurements from these tiny, squirming subjects.

“We often heard about novice researchers dropping hatchlings,” says Mohd Uzair Rusli, a biologist at the University of Malaysia Terengganu in Kuala Terengganu. A drop in the lab from table height can be deadly, damaging their fragile internal organs. Read more in New Scientist.

New Scientist conservation, marine biology, tonic immobility, turtles

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