Turtle Talk

Rose Lombard's turtles, with her aid and like Asian elephants with their mahouts, can draw pictures of themselves, then bow before the camera; they can search a dictionary; they can spell their names on a computer; and above all, they can "read-write," using a large homemade word-board to which they guide Rose and nose out the words, letters, and phrases to tell her whatever is on their minds. They have exchanged a large tranche of emails with me.

Evidence of these skills is shown on a 33-minute YouTube documentary entitled "Rosemary's Turtles." But note: though it may seem that in the double-blind test we once put one of them through, he failed, a close inspection of the doc shows that he was merely resisting the process, claiming that he should be the one controlling the test. And when Rose asked him if he were ready for the test, he nosed the space between her thumb and forefinger (thumb indicating Yes, forefinger No), indicating ambiguity.