The Chinese soft-shell turtle passes waste through its mouth.

While turtles aren’t usually referred to as beautiful beings, they can be cute in a bizarre way and they certainly do draw attention.

Well a breed of turtle in Southeast Asia are capturing some media spotlight, but for a very strange reason. Scientists recently discovered that the Chinese softshell turtle excretes urine through its mouth. An official from the National University of Singapore pointed out that when the turtle is on land during dry climates, it will dive its head into puddles. When the turtle's head is underwater, it gets rid of the urea through tiny studs in its mouth that work like gills.

The researchers found that it could expel urine from its mouth for up to 100 minutes.

Researchers suggest that generally animals need to drink a lot of water to create urine. The Chinese softshell turtle can't do the same because it spends most of its time in salty waters and drinking high amounts of brackish water could be unhealthy. Interestingly, the turtle has evolved and figured out a way to work around this problem through oral urination. Researchers suggests that, "It doesn’t need to drink anything. It just gargles some surrounding water and spits out its waste".