A Robotic Spy Sea Turtle Crawls Up Costa Rican Beach to Lay Camera Eggs For Vultures to Steal

In a terrapine clip narrated by David Tennant from the PBS/BBC series ‘The Tropics: Spy in the Wild 2’, an incredibly realistic robotic spy sea turtle joins thousands of other olive ridley sea turtles to climb the sandy beach of Ostional, Costa Rica in order to lay their eggs. This synchronized nesting process is known as the “arribadas”.

The turtles have to bury their eggs as quickly as possible in order to keep the hovering vultures at bay. The spy turtle also digs a hole but is less protective of her progeny as they are little egg cameras that will keep an unblinking eye no matter what happens.

Robotic Spy Turtle Joins An Epic Turtle Invasion but has an astonishing trick up its sleeve to film up close and personal among the olive ridley sea turtles. Every year hundreds of thousands of olive ridley sea turtles come to the shores of Ostional in Costa Rica to lay their eggs. Around 20,000 may arrive in a single day!