In Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous region of the East African nation of Tanzania, sea turtle meat has proven to be a sometimes deadly delicacy. Officials have warned against consuming it.
It’s incredible, I’ve never seen a disease with so little information on the actual mechanism behind it. The articles just lists where it happens and every symptom you can think of. The word Chelonitoxin itself just refers to the scientific name of these turtles Chelonia followed by toxin.
I dug a little deeper and found this:
Salmonella sp., Proteus sp., Aeromonas, Escherichia coli, Citrobacter sp., Enterobacter sp., Klebsiella sp., Morganella morganii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella sp. and Shigella sp. are some of the pathogenic microorganisms found in this study. Some of these microorganisms are common bacterial flora of nesting green turtles (Santoro et al., 2006).
So it looks like the gut biome of the turtles is capable of killing humans. My first guess was going to be the diet of the turtles.
It’s incredible, I’ve never seen a disease with so little information on the actual mechanism behind it. The articles just lists where it happens and every symptom you can think of. The word Chelonitoxin itself just refers to the scientific name of these turtles Chelonia followed by toxin.
I dug a little deeper and found this:
So it looks like the gut biome of the turtles is capable of killing humans. My first guess was going to be the diet of the turtles.