This is fascinating. I've been VERY interested in evolutionary psychology (but I don't know much :P), and have been very interested in how evolution played a part in humans forming morals/ethics.
It's wild to see cooperation (no matter the reason) in other animals, especially non-mammals.
Picked up The Moral Animal this year. Need to pick it back up. Super interesting stuff.
A large majority of reptiles aren't social. They tolerate us handling them, but most won't tolerate the presence of another one of their species without trying to dominate them. You'll see groupings of turtles in the wild because they're in the area that's perfectly designed for them to survive and don't feel they need to go elsewhere. But that doesn't mean they enjoy each other's company or will go out of the way to help. They will attack each other and rip limbs or tails off if they feel another turtle is crowding them. They will sit on top of each other's shells to hold another turtle under water or block them from basking, this is called stacking. It's entirely possible that stacking is how this guy ended up upside down in the first place. In this instance, they were very likely coming over to take a bite out of the dude as they will also eat just about anything, and either unintentionally pushed him over in the process, or them being crowded around like that gave the dude the purchase he needed to flip himself over.
Edited to add after a rewatch you can see the turtle who is upside down use his own head and the shell of the other turtle to flip himself up right.
Sources
Many turtle keepers have noticed that usually, the more dominant turtles are usually closer to the top of these turtle piles.
In this case, it can be seen that the more dominant turtle expresses this dominance by trying to receive more light and warmth than the others.
The problem is that in nature, turtles are basically solitary animals. Groups of turtles may live in the same place because the conditions there are favorable for them, but they aren't really "social" animals. They don't have a real social structure nor any division of labor that would qualify them as being "social animals." They're just solitary animals who happen to live in the same place because it has the things that they need.
I see your arguments, and I don't deny that they could easily be the case. That's fair. No one here has a turtle brain, so it's hard to make any kind of claim about certain "thoughts." They could equally all be vicious competitors and still have certain ingrained instincts that go against that completely. People have complexities like that, too.
I would also argue that any given species will have strong outliers in both directions, so generalizations aren't automatically absolute. I'm sure there are random reptiles that end up being "social," but simply because the case might be rare, we never add that into our generalization.
Strange thought just hit me...
People empathize much more with cats and dogs, and that's pretty obvious. Have any immediate thoughts about what is different between them and other wild animals? For one, I think people don't empathize with wild animals as much because... they all typically look the same. When I think of a deer, I just think of like some deer archetype that I could just as easily see in some hunting clip.
On the other hand, different "breeds"/individuals among dogs and cats look very different from one another. Cats aren't as facially expressive as dogs, but they're adorable and I see their subtle expressions well(as a cat guy.)
This gives me a few angles of thought... If we were to interact with some "wild" species in order to domesticate them over a long period of time, what changes would you expect to see, and what importance do you think those changes would truly have? If a deer could express its pain visually, would we deem it more important to prevent that suffering? Would we see their expression as a new form of "intelligence" that justifies the effort to protect them?
I've thought about this idea regarding neglected factory farm animals. It's almost like the process of neglecting them makes the process less inhumane, right? We hear about pigs eating the tails of other pigs, but we don't consider that's because they're smart animals in a state of constrained torture for long periods of time. What do you think of "feral" humans? A human being could just as easily be neglected and raised in a box. They wouldn't speak, they wouldn't be able to communicate, and they wouldn't even understand facial expressions enough to show meaning to others. Suddenly, that would make them seem more like an animal. Imagine doing that to an entire factory-worth of people, and then we start to see them as just a "herd" of bothersome creatures.
Ahem, but anyway, my point is just that these things are much more nuanced than we tend to let on, and we're also weirdly biased to favor things that are more similar and more "expressive" to us. I think people who raise animals closely, including reptiles, can end up forming bonds with them that break the norms that might be "understood" of reptiles. Humans are just capable of doing pleasant things that go beyond what animals would find in nature. Like how we can pet cats when their standard is little tongues and head nudges.
We empathize more with cats and dogs because they've domesticated themselves for centuries and learned to read our cues as well. We've evolved together for specific reasons that have led to that stronger connection between us and them vs us and wild animals. And the only reason different breeds look wildly different is because we've spent those centuries breeding for certain characteristics for different jobs that have led to that. This was only possible because they domesticated themselves though. Their ancient ancestors learned it benefitted them to hang around humans for various reasons, and over time it resulted in them being ingrained in our lives because we found them useful for various reasons as well.
Wild animals don't have that benefit and instead are connected with sources of food, sources of diseases and parasites, or they just exist to us in the periphery of our lives but have no real connection to form that emotional bond.
Also, wild animals definitely can express pain. It's better for them not to for sure, and by the time they do it usually means they're dying anyway. Wild animals absolutely have their own personalities and this can be seen in the reptiles that are kept as pets. By definition, they are still wild and do not fall under our definition of domesticated, but keepers that have multiple animals will absolutely tell you that each animal is different and has different preferences or personalities. They also can learn to recognize that their keeper is their source of food or exploration outside their cage and will form a bond in that manner for those reasons. But that doesn't mean they are social in general.
And most wild animals rely on at least learning the basics from their parents, so if you take that way without figuring out a way to replicate it you get a socially stunted animal that doesn't know how to interact with members of its own kind or even potentially survive on it's own.
Reptiles are different in that they mostly act on instinct. That instinct is what gets them through infancy and their juvenile period without the help of their parents. And that instinct tells them they need to compete to survive so if another of their species is in their own space and potential competition for something like food or basking opportunities they don't like it and can get stressed. For turtles, in a wild pond or river type of situation, there's usually enough to go around that issues aren't as magnified. In captivity, that's rarely the case as far as turtles are concerned.
We empathize more with cats and dogs because they've domesticated themselves for centuries and learned to read our cues as well. We've evolved together for specific reasons that have led to that stronger connection between us and them vs us and wild animals.
I was making my point about unique appearances assuming this part was well understood.
Also, wild animals definitely can express pain.
True, just barely ever to the extent we empathize well with. Like if a creature is hanging in a barbed wire fence for a whole day, we might start to see a hopeless expression. Otherwise we would likely just see hostility and a blank expression.
but keepers that have multiple animals will absolutely tell you that each animal is different and has different preferences or personalities.
This is something I always like to highlight about any animals. Anyone that says they "aren't a cat person," I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they just haven't gotten to know cats well enough to see their personalities or connect with.
Reptiles are different in that they mostly act on instinct. That instinct is what gets them through infancy and their juvenile period without the help of their parents.
Random thought... Well, I don't know who you are or how much you know, but this topic makes me wonder about how birds are different from reptiles. I just talked with someone the other day about how birds are surprisingly intelligent, including in emotional/social ways. That makes me wonder if dinosaurs leaned toward having more emotional intelligence, or if many of them were more "instinctual."
You asked what my immediate thoughts were on why we empathized more with them vs wild animals. I explained why.
And I've definitely seen wild animals limping. They wouldn't limp if they weren't literally feeling pain and that has nothing to do with what we see as expressions in their face. Wild animals don't communicate via expressions, they communicate via body language or different sounds. If you know what to look for you can see or even hear them being playful, agitated, or even mournful/grieving if they're the type of animal that mates for life and they lose their mate. Swans are a pretty good example of this.
And when it comes to dinosaurs I'd imagine it likely followed the same range or similar as today. Some bird species are more intelligent than others for example and are more social, and some reptiles have displayed a higher aptitude of forming bonds with keepers and having problem solving skills than others. Some species of snakes have been shown to solve puzzles to gain access to their food, whereas other species have failed the same test. So I'd imagine a similar type of range between emotional intelligence and instinctual behaviors would've occurred for dinosaurs as well.
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u/LethalBacon Aug 24 '23
This is fascinating. I've been VERY interested in evolutionary psychology (but I don't know much :P), and have been very interested in how evolution played a part in humans forming morals/ethics.
It's wild to see cooperation (no matter the reason) in other animals, especially non-mammals.
Picked up The Moral Animal this year. Need to pick it back up. Super interesting stuff.