Chennai Tortoise Loses Leg, Gets Wheel Implant. Now She Might Be The Fastest At This Zoo!

When officials at the Vandalur zoo saw a two-year-old star tortoise on Tuesday with an injured leg that needed amputation, they thought she would be slower than her colleagues. Now, with wheels replacing the missing leg, she is as fast, if not faster, than a hare, they add.

The tortoise was in the enclosure at the zoo when four bigger tortoises set upon her. "One of them bit her on the leg. A few more joined in, attacking the same limb. It was an instance of mob behaviour," said zoo director K S S V P Reddy.

Later, the animal keeper noticed the tortoise struggling to move even to get its share of food from the common plate and informed the veterinary surgeons.

Convinced that the badly injured leg had to be removed, they decided to replace it with a tiny light wheel — normally used on a sliding window. During an operation that lasted 30 minutes, they affixed two wheels — one of them in front of the uninjured left leg — to the underside of the shell with a special resin. The wheels were then connected with a thin, lightweight metal rod.

A few minutes after the surgery, the tortoise moved around unfazed by the prosthetic — neither the wheel nor the rods attached to it seemed to bother her. "She now reaches her food faster than the 49 other tortoises in the enclosure. The rest aren't even close to competing with her. She's swivelling on her wheels," said Reddy.

In March, veterinary surgeons at the zoo undertook a cosmetic surgery to help a leopard that was badly injured after getting stuck in a trap poachers had laid out for a wild boar in Lovedale Reserved Forest in Nilgiris.

This time, the vets aren't able to say if the tortoise is happy or sad, but said they have made a difference.