A 3D-printed wheelchair is helping this turtle walk again
A Gulf Coast box turtle named Moses, missing both of his back legs, is getting a second chance at mobility thanks to a caring human and a 3D printer. Using the printer, an aquarist by the Instagram handle jawscritters designed a custom wheelchair that complements Moses’ movements. After receiving feedback from a community of creators on Reddit, jawscritters made several adjustments to the original design. Today, with the help of this online community, Moses moves better than before thanks to his new pair of wheels. Jawscritters has since shared the design files online, so anyone with a 3D printer can potentially help other turtles in need.
“A colleague of mine asked if I could create something to help one of our ambassador box turtles get around,” Jawscritters notes in one of his posts. “In 24 hours, I intended to make a 3D printed wheelchair.”
Building a Turtle Wheelchair, One Iteration at a Time
Jawscritters says he was approached by a colleague at the Mississippi Aquarium in Gulfport to see if he could help improve Moses’ mobility. Although it’s unclear what exactly caused the problem, Moses’ lack of back legs prevented the football-sized reptile from moving on its own. Jawscritters got to work on the design and said it had several working prototypes within a week. Images of the first model show what looks like the rear axle and wheels of an orange toy truck attached to the turtle and attached to Moses by a harness on top of his shell.
To improve these early efforts, jawscritters made a series of structural adjustments. First, he made the wheels thinner and the axles shorter, which he said should help Moses take sharper turns. He also slightly reduced the diameter of each wheel and added grooves to the base of the new wheelchair.
However, not all attempts at change have been successful. Jawscritters says he tried adding a front bumper to the chair in hopes of keeping it level and making it easier for Moses to move around. In reality, this addition seemed to make it more difficult for Moses to move the wheelchair, so the bumper idea was ultimately abandoned.
Although Jawscritters notes that there’s probably still room for improvement in the design, the aquarium keeper seems happy with Moses’ newfound mobility. With the files now shared online, they could potentially help other turtles in the long run.
“This has been a fun and challenging project and I’m very happy to see this little guy zooming around,” Jawscritters wrote in one of its posts.
Transform turtles into wheeled cars
This isn’t the first time a helpful human has tried to DIY a turtle wheelchair. In 2018, Maryland Zoo veterinarians discovered an injured Eastern box turtle with multiple fractures under its shell. To help him get healthy again, they needed to find a way to keep his shell lifted off the ground without hindering his ability to move. The solution: a LEGO wheelchair. The vets drew some initial designs and then sent them to a LEGO enthusiast. Together, they created a multi-colored LEGO frame surrounding the turtle shell sitting on a pair of LEGO wheels. Plumber’s putty was used to attach the device securely to the turtle’s shell. Fortunately, the injured turtle immediately took to his new set of wheels.
“He never even hesitated,” Fraess said. “He has taken off and is doing very well,” Garrett Fraess, an external veterinarian at the Maryland Zoo, said in a blog post.
LEGO Turtle at the Maryland Zoo
This turtle has since made a full recovery and was released back into its original habitat.
Further south, a veterinarian at LSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine encountered a pet turtle named Pedro in 2019 who had lost his back legs after escaping from his enclosure. In this case, veterinarians decided to abandon the wheelchair approach and instead used a LEGO car kit to place a removable axle and wheels directly under Pedro’s shell. The result is a sort of rudimentary cyborg turtle hot rod.
LSU vets get Pedro the turtle moving
Elsewhere, 3D printing technology is making it easier to create personalized, specialized mobility aids for animals that would otherwise not be available in consumer markets. In 2024, a team of volunteers and engineers banded together to 3D print a harness intended to help a nearly three-decade-old turtle named Charlotte who has the funny-named, but medically serious, bubble butt syndrome. This harness helped weigh down the turtle’s back without damaging its shell. Thanks to this intervention, Charlotte’s swimming has improved and he no longer needs to sleep with his butt in the air.
Turtle with round butt syndrome swimming
The proliferation of 3D printers and falling prices mean that more and more people potentially have the resources to make unique devices tailored to specific situations. Yet even with all this technology readily available, it still takes the initiative and care of animal caretakers like Jawscritters to turn this into something tangible.
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