Slightly off-topic. There is a very important difference. Drop a tortoise in the water and it drowns. Leave a turtle out of water long enough and it dies. A lot of people assume that I caught her wild in the lake. I have to explain that she is a land animal and not from North America.
I think that it is mainly me and XS11E, but over 20 people looked at the video yesterday, so it can't be bothering them to badly.
I was thinking about you. You need a reptile that will outlive and possibly outgrow you. She also eats a LOT, and that will only increase with time. :-)
Absolutely, but I thought that difference in terminology only existed in British English and that American English used the word "turtle" for both the land and water-borne varieties? Or is it just that people falsely use "turtle" for everything?
There was a big stink here a while ago when someone phoned the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a society that basically does lots of different things for animals) to say they found a "turtle" in their back garden. They came, collected the "turtle", put it in a bucket of water, and it drowned. The person involved got sacked for not being able to tell the difference between a turtle and a tortoise which is, it has to be said, a very difficult mistake to make - they tend to look distinctly different.
Too right - can't bear the thought of someone buying it to put in a pot...
It's strange, we will call a Galapagos a tortoise, never a turtle, but a Terrapene is called a box turtle, despite the fact that it is a tortoise, not a turtle. So it is really both. Any turtle or tortoise besides the Galapagos tortoise is referred to a turtle by most people that I have known. I have never heard anyone refer to a turtle as a tortoise.
Most of the people that have seen this one have never heard of the African Spurred. They call her a turtle every time. The African Spurred Tortoise is endangered in Africa but they are far from rare in captivity.
Yikes! The feet having webbing or not is a big giveaway.
I guess growing up owning box (turtles?), red ears, and even snapping turtles makes the difference seem obvious where it would not be to some, but come on, this person should have known better or asked someone else if they work with an organization that deals with a variety of animals.
There was a local African Spurred that escaped the owner's yard, this one was almost 40 pounds. His main concern was that someone would find it and take it to the water and throw it in, thinking that is where it had come from. (They found it, BTW).
That would suck, but my main concern would have been that my 40 pound rock was walking around, potentially onto the roadways. Hitting that thing at speed in your miata could be, interesting, to say the least....Trying to avoid it might cause similar problems.
Thanks! It looks like a friend may keep her. He keeps telling me that I will be back soon anyway.
"Eric Baber" wrote in news:xdpOh.27075$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net:
So, as someone with no particular interest in turtles and a victim* of American English, I had to look up the difference between the two.. Here's a reasonable description:
formatting link
-Scott
*victim: someone who blames their own ignorance on the most convenient scape goat
The gospel according to St. Encyclopedia Britannica:
turtle Any of more than 250 species (order Chelonia) of reptiles having a bony shell overlaid with horny shields; found in most parts of the world.
tortoise Any of some 40 species (family Testudinidae) of slow-moving, terrestrial, herbivorous turtles, found in the Old and New Worlds but chiefly in Africa and Madagascar. So tortoises are turtles but turtles aren't always tortoises.
I learned something, I didn't know tortoises are included in the term "turtle".
Now I have to confuse my friends even further by explaining that yes she is a turtle and a tortoise, but still keep her out of any water above her head.....
Yet you are the only person here to have seen her except on video. Of course, we were talking about miatas instead of animals, something that should probably be done here as well.
Nah! Check out this video of a tortoise defending his territory against cats. He hauls ass. I normally would not condone a making film like this, but neither creature could really hurt the other.
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