Illustrations courtesy of Thinkstock

In an apparent attempt to gain a longer life, patrons at a Chinese zoo have been showering money on a group of turtles.

In a report from FoxNews.com, visitors at the Zhengzhou Zoo in the Henan Province of east-central China have started to throw vast amounts of cash and change into an enclosure housing several giant Thai turtles.

The belief from zoo patrons is that the ancient turtles hold the secret to long life—the animals live up to 150 years—and that by donating money to them, guests will be blessed by the creatures and awarded a longer life.

Since finding out that the turtles had an exhibit at the Zhengzhou Zoo, tourists have come from all over the country to donate their money to the animals. To keep the turtles as safe as possible and to make room for more monetary donations, zoo keepers occasionally clean the tanks of all the cash and change thrown inside the enclosure.

The official Twitter account of the People's Daily in China shared an image of a turtle covered in money:

Giant turtles bore with excessive RMB, cast by superstitious tourists at a zoo in C China. http://t.co/WhySmZflmY pic.twitter.com/1Oj75mkkEB

— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) August 25, 2015

While throwing money into an animal’s enclosure at the zoo immediately raises a red flag for safety concerns, this is not the first time Zhengzhou Zoo has been under scrutiny for the treatment of its animals. Last year, a seven-year-old female giant panda passed away at the zoo and the facility was banned from housing pandas any longer.

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