Florida biologist finds live turtle in stomach of largemouth bass

March 4 (UPI) -- Biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said they were catching largemouth bass for research when they made a surprising discovery -- a live turtle in a fish's stomach.

The commission and Wildlife Research Institute said biologists were collecting tissue samples from fish that were caught earlier in the day by an airboat in the Everglades when a member of the team spotted something highly unusual: "movement coming from the stomach of a bass."

"The biologist carefully opens the stomach and something unexpected is inside ... a live turtle!" the institute said in a Facebook post. "Live turtles are not something biologists normally find amongst the stomach contents of largemouth bass."

The institute said the biologist carefully extracted the turtle from the stomach of the fish and, after determining that it was healthy, released it back into the water.