Removed by mod
It’s a meme - not exactly a medium where rigorous accuracy and attention to detail are to be expected. According to this Smithsonian article (soft paywall) from a few years ago (regarding his 190th birthday), he’s actually bi and that’s quite normal for them.
They do indeed fuck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_(tortoise)#Since_2015
https://www.huffpost.com/archive/au/entry/the-oldest-animal-in-the-world-is-probably-gay_a_23251452
The tortoise on the left seems to be Harriet, one of the other longest lived tortoises tho she’s since passed. I’m guessing OOP did a search and got them confused.
Yeah but to him it seemed like about a year and a half.
deleted by creator
It’s cute and all but… I really hate that arguement. If it wasn’t natural, it wouldn’t make it any less moral. We don’t need to play by their rhetorical rules. I know that this is just a cute thing, but I see this kind of things all the time and I feel quite strongly about it. So what if I wasn’t born this way? So what if it’s not natural? Does it somehow make things worse? Or is just an excuse to justify hatred of something that just grosses the 'phobes out?.. y’know?
Glasses are not natural, pacemakers are not natural, cars are not natural.
Anyone who uses “not natural” as an argument while not living in a brush hut and cooking over a woodfire is just a hypocrite
We’re the only species that can make our own fires. So unless you stumble upon a fire that has started because of a lightning strike or something, cooking over a fire is pretty unnatural. Then again we are part of nature, so anything we do is natural 🤷♂️
I’ve been saying this for years. It doesn’t matter if you choose to be gay or not. It doesn’t matter how many biological sexes there are. People should do what ever the fuck they want with their own bodies and personalities.
To be fair, when arguing with anyone about things not being natural, point out the car they drive, the processed food they cook, the job they work: all very unnatural things that people “choose” to do.
Yeah but cars don’t go to hell when they die, and they really just care about gay peoples’ souls! They swear!
You know what else isn’t natural? Clothes, houses, cars, glasses, phones…
It’s just a dumb argument to begin with, and it’s not even correct. Par for the course for conservatives.
Of course it is a dumb argument, but it is to refute the even dumber argument that somehow homosexuality isn’t natural.
My point is that we shouldn’t even entertain the question in the first place. It doesn’t matter if it’s natural or not. If it was unnatural, it wouldn’t make it any less moral or okay.
AND THEY WERE ROOMMATES!
No. They were best friends who lived together. (Don’t worry, I know the vine you’re talking about haha)
I keep babbling about turtles being shell-friends. But apparently some turtles are more than just friends!
Oh my god, they were roommates.
Sharing the same shell?
Who knows what they were up to when nobody was watching… 😅
Old man yaoi.
I was in a band by that name. We only played instrumental national anthems.
In hindsight, both factors might have limited our marketability a bit…
Turtles are the horniest animals on the planet.
If you don’t have enough girls per male, they will not be able to eat or drink because they are constantly molested by the fuckmachine males.
If you want to live with turtles, don’t mix genders, or get a whole lot of turtles…
Considering their reputation for lack of speed, the sex must be extremely satisfying so of course they’re always wanting more! 🤪
Fun fact, the velociraptor calls from Jurassic Park were based on sounds of turtles mating
The little buggers are not as slow as people think.
These are tortoises, not turtles.
https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-a-turtle-and-a-tortoise
What is a tortoise anyway? Is it just a fancy way to say “turtle”? Well, actually, there’s a meaningful difference between tortoises and other turtles. All tortoises are in fact turtles—that is, they belong to the order Testudines or Chelonia, reptiles having bodies encased in a bony shell—but not all turtles are tortoises. If tortoises are turtles, why not just call all turtlelike creatures “turtle”? Because if the animal you’re referring to is a tortoise, some wise guy is going to correct you every time.
Hi, it’s me 👋
Swans are also apparently Hella gay so…
#goals
Aww such a cute couple 🥰💖
Everything comes from nature so nothing is unnatural.
Well that would just diminish the value of having both words.
So?
The words exist across languages because we use them to mean something. If they had neither denotative nor connotative use, your comment itself would not mean anything. That you made the comment seems to me to imply that you know there is a difference.
Yes, we use them to mean something that is wrong.
We have the concept of werewolves, doesn’t mean they exist.
This is such a silly line of thinking. To call being gay unnatural is clearly a misuse of the word, but the idea that everything that exists at all is natural is nonsense. For example, hot pink is an unnatural human hair color. Even if you color your hair hot pink, and therefore it exists; that doesn’t make it natural. So in the absence of another word used to describe something that wouldn’t otherwise exist in nature without human intervention, … “unnatural” is perfectly suited to this task.
The silly line of thinking is that because a human does something, it makes it unnatural.
I understand that it is meant that way. I’m just criticizing it.
People could be born with hot pink hair and at that point it would be natural?
Is plastic unnatural because it is made by humans? If there was a bacteria who produces plastic would that make plastic natural?
It’s the underlying misunderstanding that people think humanity is something special.
Let’s be real. People say unnatural and mean wrong or undesirable. And I am arguing against that.
With that last part I agree. And I’d bet we probably generally agree, but as a matter of perspective our positions look different. I’m not trying to be obtuse here.
Well that’s not true. Hatsune miku is not natural in the slightest.
Is an anthill not natural despite having been made by natural beings?
Is Hatsune Miku not natural despite having been made by natural beings?
Hatsune Miku is the anthill of humanity. The peak of our nature.
You’d be hard pressed to find a majority of people who agree that things made by humans are natural.
That’s pretty much the one thing that gets called not natural.
Hatsune Miku is capable of possessing the Decepticon Soundwave so she is very much not natural.
Also I would personally consider things created by creatures in the animal kingdom to be unnatural by default. With a further breakdown between naturalistic vs manufactured, with naturalistic being for example an anthill while manufactured would be for example a biface.
Natural biological processes such as breathing, pissing, and shitting are natural though.
I mean, I’m being facetious, for the record. It is, of course, a deeper and more interesting topic
Though, what I would end up saying in reality is that the distinction is for the most part meaningless in my opinion. The manufactured does not have to inherently be at odds with the natural.
Manufactured under such circumstances just means that it’s been altered in such a way that nature is either unlikely to or unable to. It’s not so much as it’s at odds so much as they are two distinct processes one is the simple mechanism of the universe doing its thing while the other is a mind inflicting it’s will, while life may be a consequence of thermodynamics we can still tell a burrow from aeons past from a simple rock which the wind has blasted through.
Also this is a matter of philosophy which has the potential of causing first fights amongst anthropologists. Which is what makes it fun. Also there is probably no good answer since it is as much derived from an individuals world view than anything else.
When I was a teen I asked my religious homophobic grandma if animals dont have rational thought but can still be gay, how did they “choose” to be gay? Her response? Gay penguins dont have souls so it doesnt count.
Just shows you that people like that just want a neat and tidy (thought terminating) answer, rather than to know the actual truth.
To which I’d have been tempted to reply: “Then how is it that they care for one another if they are without souls? Maybe being so callously judgemental of that which you don’t understand makes you the soulless one who doesn’t count.”
Homosexual behaviour has been exhibited by every known species. Homophobia has only been documented in one .
Who’s fuckin unnatural now?
“Being gay is gay” is the tautology this whole thing will eventually evolve to as all their arguments get refuted one by one.
I wouldn’t bet on it. If they cared about their arguments getting refuted via logic and/or facts, then they’d already have dropped their bullshit.
No, they’re emotionally still children taught by bullies how to “win” by refusing to back down no matter what, and that “might makes right” so they all back each other up. It unfortunately all too often works for them by simply wearing out their opponents - who can’t fathom not giving AF about the facts, and/or just don’t know how to defeat such obstinance.
This is the sort of argument that might stick though “oh yea well world’s oldest tortoise is a 150 gay monogomous male tortoise named Jonathan”. The problem starts when people begin their discussions like “well scientific studies show that…”. You should treat them like they have the attention span of a toddler.
If that’s the required MO, then I don’t see the point in even bothering. Reality is virtually always going to be more complicated than those arrogantly making such basic erroneous assertions are going to be willing to deal with. That attitude of “I’m right no matter what” is driven by deep insecurities that have long since been forgotten as their real motivations after they buried them in overcompensating mountains of false bravado. You can ELI5 all you want, but if they’re not as open to learning new things as someone who actually is a 5yo, then odds are extremely high that you’ll just be wasting your time.
Maybe that’s why they’re almost extinct. By 1840, they had almost completely died out as a species.
Or because they were hunted to near extinction by Europeans for soup and shell based accessories…?
No, it’s gotta be the gay
Gay tortoises are tastier.
But much more difficult to breed… 🤪
That, or all the crayons the original commenter has been devouring (username).
Humpback whales are “least concern” and the first images we have of them fucking is male on male.
There are lots of ways that having homosexual behavior in animals can help a species survive. Gay couples can raise orphans, sex can serve as a form of social bonding or even dominance to maintain social structures… It’s an uncritical high school student’s understanding of evolution and biology to assume that all adaptive behavior directly leads to reproduction.
Humpback, indeed!
I smell an aquatic sequel: Humpback Trench
In stead of Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger when he was alive, it’ll star an actual humpback whale and the remains of no longer alive Heath Ledger
Heath Ledger will still be amongst a whopping 64 posthumous Oscar nominees, but the only one to be nominated for posthumous accomplishments.
“I wish I knew how to quit you, because you have destroyed my internal organs.”
Dude, whatever you’re on… I want no part of it.
There have been numerous documented occurrences of homosexuality across a wide variety of species. If they were to become extinct, it’d be unlikely to be due to a relatively small percentage of them being gay.
Apart from anything else, does that stop them from breeding?
Weaker/smaller male cuttlefish will pretend to be female cuttlefish, take “dick” (hectocotylus) from stronger male cuttlefish, and then use the distraction to breed with a female.
Not my line of expertise, but I’d guess it’s little different from us humans in that there’s nothing technical preventing reproduction with a member of the opposite sex - just a matter of desire to.
Maybe the list of animals displaying homosexual behavior on Wikipedia can be a good starting place for research should you genuinely be curious about this.
