cooperscuba
Contributor
Ive met people who dislike dogs (although usually theyll tell you that it is the dogs that dont like them), Ive met people who dislike cats with a passion (they are strange little people and they have my sympathy) but Ive never met anyone who hates the tortoise. How can you? Theyre one of the most inoffensive creatures on the planet. Slow moving, posing a threat to nothing (unless youre a lettuce and then, whoa, you are in trouble), with a generally contented look upon their countenance; its hard not to like a tortoise, let alone harbor any misgivings about them.
Maybe this is the reason why so many people love turtles? They look similar to tortoises after all? They generally move around the reefs with slow and languished strokes of their flippers; which isnt to say they lack the ability to turn the power on, as anyone who has tried to swim along with one in a hurry will tell you. They appear to have a primarily environmentally friendly vegetarian diet consisting of sea grass and soft corals (*). Appearances are deceiving though, the soft corals that resemble broccoli are animals but we are quite happy to watch them being shredded by a hungry turtle. We love the turtle and we'll even forgive them breaking corals with poor buoyancy control while in search of something palatable on the reef.
The two most famous turtles in the world are probably not the leatherback and loggerhead turtles, nor the hawksbill and green but two individual, surf-cultured turtles named Crush & Squirt from Pixars Finding Nemo. Pixar could have gone with a more Eeyore-styled rendition of the turtles and it would have worked, the slow are often attributed with slow witted, but they went with the cool and the knowing. And it wasnt just surf knowledge, but paternal knowledge too. Crush offers serious advice to Marlin about allowing Nemo to grow as an individual, Well, you never really know, but when they know, you know, y'know? Surely this is the most succinct advice given about parenting, ever. Yknow?
Another famous turtle (although within more specially refined circles) is the star turtle, Great Atuin; a creature so large that it carries on its back a whole world (shaped like a pizza but without the anchovies) and four continental sized elephants. Whether Atuin is highly intelligent or extremely dumb no one knows, but you cant argue that he or she (Atuins sex has never been proven (**)) has a position of supreme and singular importance to everyone on Sir Terry Pratchetts Discworld. And if you think that is a strange idea, he (Sir Terry Pratchett) was influenced by a major world religion.
We are as a species in love with the turtle and, whatever the reason is, it runs deep ...
... and we don't mind tortoises either(***).
(*) Corals aren't plants I know, but read on BEFORE informing me of this
(**) A'Tuin did not lay any eggs, just swam in space to a red sun with 8 moons that hatched in to turtles with elephants etc. - this does not prove the animals sex, one way or the other
(***) As a species in general. I understand from posters on other forums that there is such a thing as a tortoise gone bad - although I reckon you must be slow of limb and slow of mind to be attacked by a rogue tortoise
Maybe this is the reason why so many people love turtles? They look similar to tortoises after all? They generally move around the reefs with slow and languished strokes of their flippers; which isnt to say they lack the ability to turn the power on, as anyone who has tried to swim along with one in a hurry will tell you. They appear to have a primarily environmentally friendly vegetarian diet consisting of sea grass and soft corals (*). Appearances are deceiving though, the soft corals that resemble broccoli are animals but we are quite happy to watch them being shredded by a hungry turtle. We love the turtle and we'll even forgive them breaking corals with poor buoyancy control while in search of something palatable on the reef.
The two most famous turtles in the world are probably not the leatherback and loggerhead turtles, nor the hawksbill and green but two individual, surf-cultured turtles named Crush & Squirt from Pixars Finding Nemo. Pixar could have gone with a more Eeyore-styled rendition of the turtles and it would have worked, the slow are often attributed with slow witted, but they went with the cool and the knowing. And it wasnt just surf knowledge, but paternal knowledge too. Crush offers serious advice to Marlin about allowing Nemo to grow as an individual, Well, you never really know, but when they know, you know, y'know? Surely this is the most succinct advice given about parenting, ever. Yknow?
Another famous turtle (although within more specially refined circles) is the star turtle, Great Atuin; a creature so large that it carries on its back a whole world (shaped like a pizza but without the anchovies) and four continental sized elephants. Whether Atuin is highly intelligent or extremely dumb no one knows, but you cant argue that he or she (Atuins sex has never been proven (**)) has a position of supreme and singular importance to everyone on Sir Terry Pratchetts Discworld. And if you think that is a strange idea, he (Sir Terry Pratchett) was influenced by a major world religion.
We are as a species in love with the turtle and, whatever the reason is, it runs deep ...
... and we don't mind tortoises either(***).
(*) Corals aren't plants I know, but read on BEFORE informing me of this
(**) A'Tuin did not lay any eggs, just swam in space to a red sun with 8 moons that hatched in to turtles with elephants etc. - this does not prove the animals sex, one way or the other
(***) As a species in general. I understand from posters on other forums that there is such a thing as a tortoise gone bad - although I reckon you must be slow of limb and slow of mind to be attacked by a rogue tortoise
