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.
Sea turtle meat is considered a delicacy by Zanzibar’s people even though it periodically results in deaths from chelonitoxism, a type of food poisoning.
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.
cyanobacteria infection of the turtle. it can also happen if they dont parboil the turtle meat correctly. that’s the best i could find using an Internet search
Had to look up why sea turtle meat would kill, since it’s not reported in the article. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelonitoxism
Second paragraph.
Typical NBC not embedding an entire wikipedia page in their article. smh my head.
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.
Huh, fascinating stuff. Wonder what triggers it
cyanobacteria infection of the turtle. it can also happen if they dont parboil the turtle meat correctly. that’s the best i could find using an Internet search
Wikipedia notes that the likely cause is a neurotoxin. Apparently it’s an area of little research, though.
The ‘why’ is lacking in the wiki article too, unfortunately.