Name: Mary River turtle (Elusor macrurus)

Where it lives: Mary /Moonaboola River, Queensland, Australia

What it eats: Mostly aquatic plants, but sometimes seeds, fruits and insect larvae

Why it's awesome: This turtle has a distinctive, punk-like appearance, thanks to green algae growing from its head and body that helps it hide from predators in its aquatic home. It also has two long, fleshy protrusions called barbels sticking out from its chin that help it sense its surroundings.

💁‍♂️Introducing the Mary River Turtle🐢This species of Australian turtle is unique for two reasons. Firstly, it breathes through its bottom! 💨

And secondly, it has what resembles a green mohawk on its head! This is because the turtle grows strands of algae on its body. pic.twitter.com/NYcahDCluG

— WWF (@WWF) June 29, 2020 Related: Can turtles really breathe through their butts?

The glands — called cloacal bursae — are covered with papillae, which are small structures lining the walls of the bursae. Oxygen in the water diffuses across the papillae and into the turtle's bloodstream.

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The Mary River turtle is also unique: No other turtle is closely related to it. "It is the only surviving species in its genus," Gumbs said. "It is thought the ancestors of the Mary River turtle diverged from all other living turtle lineages more than 18 million years ago — several million years before our ancestors and those of the orangutan parted ways."

Despite being prolific in the pet trade for decades in the 1960s and 1970s, its distribution in the wild was a mystery to scientists until they were finally found in the wild and formally described as a species in 1994.