AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Visitors to the Turtle Back Zoo watch through a large picture window as a white-cheeked gibbon undergoes a wellness checkup in West Orange, N.J., Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025.

Forget the giraffes, gibbons and leopards. About a dozen visitors at the Turtle Back Zoo gathered one recent morning around the most unusual sight of all.

It was a small, light-brown tortoise getting a veterinary checkup.

Stream Philadelphia News for free, 24/7, wherever you are with NBC10. WATCH HERE

Over the next half-hour, spectators watched through a plate-glass window as the young sulcata tortoise — an endangered species also known as the African spurred tortoise — underwent measurements, X-rays, a blood draw, microchipping and more.

Inside the northern New Jersey zoo’s spacious new, pub

See Full Page