sea turtle thanks diver for saving it

bnw wrote:

Nice video but the turtle didn’t thank the diver. That turtle was exhausted. It couldn’t get away. I thank the diver though. Turtles are cool.

We have to be careful when assigning human emotions/motivations to non-humans. Is the turtle grateful or even able to feel gratitude? No way to know.

Still a nice story though.

zn wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

bnw wrote:

Nice video but the turtle didn’t thank the diver. That turtle was exhausted. It couldn’t get away. I thank the diver though. Turtles are cool.

We have to be careful when assigning human emotions/motivations to non-humans. Is the turtle grateful or even able to feel gratitude? No way to know.

Still a nice story though.

My view of this Great Controversy is that the turtle started to swim away but then turned around and came back to one of the divers.

In terms of being careful…well, why careful? If we assign some kind of sentient motives to animals, where’s the harm?

In this instance there is no harm. I didn’t mean careful in that it would be harmful, I meant it in that it could be incorrect. We don’t know what the turtle was really thinking and there are many possible explanations for its behavior.

There are instances when our tendency to anthropomorphize can do harm when we interpret behaviors in a human context.

But yeah, of course it’s not harmful in this instance to believe the turtle is grateful and indeed it may be.

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A number of years ago off the tip of BAJA we came across a sperm whale tangled in a huge net. It took several hours for 5 of us to cut and tear off most of the net. The whale must have been really sick or so traumatized it did not swim away but remained while we cut the net little by little. Eventually, after we finished and swam back to the skiff, the whale remained and we thought she’s a goner. Then we noticed she began to swim and pretty soon disappeared. One of many memorable experiences I’ve been lucky enough to encounter over years of diving.

waterfield wrote:

A number of years ago off the tip of BAJA we came across a sperm whale tangled in a huge net. It took several hours for 5 of us to cut and tear off most of the net. The whale must have been really sick or so traumatized it did not swim away but remained while we cut the net little by little. Eventually, after we finished and swam back to the skiff, the whale remained and we thought she’s a goner. Then we noticed she began to swim and pretty soon disappeared. One of many memorable experiences I’ve been lucky enough to encounter over years of diving.

Wow, that’s pretty cool, W. I envy you and your diving adventures.