Scary Inside Mouth Photograph of a Leatherback Turtle: Fact Check

Story: 

Ever seen inside the mouth of a leatherback turtle?
You’ll wish you hadn’t after this.

Other Versions

1. Believe it or not the Scariest Mouth in the World Belongs to a Species of Turtle.

2. The Inside of a Leatherback Turtle’s Mouth is Pretty Horrifying.

3. The mouth and esophagus of the leatherback turtle.

Fact Check:

A picture doing rounds online since many days claims to show the terrifying inside part of the Mouth of a Leatherback Turtle. With a bunch of rows of sharp teeth inside and alien-like look, many viewers thought the photograph showing wide open mouth of a leatherback turtle was manipulated and not real, but it is a fact.

The biggest turtle in the world, Leatherback Sea Turtle may appear adorable and harmless, but behind its cute face is a set of killer teeth, making its mouth one of the scariest in the world. The Leatherback Turtle has hundreds of those sharp, jagged, stalactite-like teeth called ‘papillae’ along its mouth and esophagus, all the way down to the stomach. The wide-open mouth picture of the Leatherback Turtle appears on website Kienthuc.net.vn, with a description that suggests leatherback sea turtles have sharp cutting edge teeth like that of a beast. In Images above, you can see some similar inner mouth parts of leatherback turtles. The sharp papillae teeth help in digesting the turtle’s prey (mainly jellyfish) as quickly as possible.

Hoax or Fact:

Fact.

References:

The Inside Of A Leatherback Turtle’s Mouth Is Pretty Horrifying