A tortoise got a second chance at life after a team of designers made a 3D-printed shell to replace the natural one that had been badly burned in a fire.
When the tortoise had been found on the side of the road in 2015, it had lost 85% of its shell structure to the fire.
A team of six people from Animal Avengers, a rescue group, designed and made the 3D-printed shell.
Cicero Moraes, the designer of the shell, told ABC News that figuring out the shape of the shell was “relatively simple.”
The team took pictures of the injured tortoise and a healthy one, then designed a custom prosthetic hull that they printed layer by layer. The hull was then surgically attached to the tortoise, and painted to look natural.
The group has previously printed out 3D-parts for other animals, including a toucan beak, goose beak, parrot beak and macaw beak.
