A pair of teen girls in Florida face animal cruelty charges after a video of a baby tortoise being tortured to death surfaced online.
In the disturbing clip, girls are seen brutalizing the small gopher tortoise— classified as an endangered species in Florida — with seeming gleeful abandon.
"Burn baby, burn baby," a girl is heard saying, holding a lighter up to the scampering creature.
"He's... hissing still," another says, picking up the tortoise.
"Let's do it again. Let me do it. He's not dead. He just went in his shell."
And moments later:
"His heart came out with a bunch of grass," says a girl, kicking the corpse. "He's dead. That's funny."
The video, according to the Florida Times-Union, was uploaded to Facebook where it caught the eye of an animal rights group from Nevada.
While it's unclear whether they are related, the girls, UPI reports, are aged 15 and 18.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has confirmed on its Facebook page that an investigation has been launched, following numerous complaints about the video earlier this week.
"We received quite a few complaints about this and a call from the Sheriff's Office, so we had an officer go out last night," Karen Parker of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission told UPI. "Everybody is pretty much sickened by it and can't believe someone would do that to an innocent animal.
WARNING: This is an extremely disturbing video.
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