The world's most bizarre discovery: Self-luminous sea turtles

Divers have discovered an extremely rare, shimmering tortoise tortoise swimming off the Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific waters. This is the case where the first reptile in the world was recorded to have the ability to produce natural biological fluorescence ever.

Shocking discovery: Hawksbill turtles glow

American biologist David Gruber discovered the strange tortoise tortoise while doing a night dive, hoping to capture the image of a bioluminescent shark and coral reefs. Mr. Gruber described, the turtle looks like "a flying saucer gliding" on the seabed.

In the exclusive video on National Geographic, the rare tortoise tortoise is emitting green and red fluorescence. However, some experts believe that red fluorescence may originate from algae growing on tortoise shells.

Scientists are still not clear why the sea turtle has such a strange fluorescence ability.

Glowing sea turtles.

Alexander Gaos, program director of the Eastern Pacific Tortoise Turtle Initiative, said: "Bioluminescence is often used to find and attract prey or to defend or serve a form. It can also be used to attract a partner. "

Mr. Gaos added that it is now difficult to study bioluminescence in hawksbill turtles , since there are very few individuals of this species in the world. Statistics show that the number of hawksbill turtles has fallen nearly 90% worldwide in recent decades.

According to experts, biofluorescence occurs when an organism absorbs light, transforms it and re-emits it in a different color. This phenomenon should not be confused with the bioluminescence ability recorded in algae and jellyfish, which occurs when the animals themselves are light sources.

In the case of biological fluorescence, specialized fluorescent molecules in the skin of the organism are stimulated by high-energy light, such as blue light. They then lose part of this light energy and release the rest at a lower energy wavelength, such as the green light observed in hawksbill turtles.

This unusual form of light can only be produced and seen by humans, when the organism is exposed to an external light source, such as a light bulb, illuminating.