Talk:Cultural depictions of turtles

In Fiction redundancy
The "in fiction" section needs to be cleaned up a bit. Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss and Great A'Tuin from Discworld are both mentioned twice. NightMaj (talk) 03:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

"It is the only one of the four that is a real animal"
Tigers are also real lol. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.136.176.88 (talk) 17:58, 30 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Fyi, I think that that probably whoever wrote that line in the article is probably thinking of unicorns, another 'mythical' beast who scientists actually now believe to be extincT!!11! 81.136.176.88 (talk) 18:03, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The four fabulous animals in the China mythology are the Dragon, The Qilin(the Kirin) / White Tiger, the Phoenix and the Tortoise. --Bobek 121 (talk) 22:32, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Minogame and "feathery tail"
The article says: "The minogame is also depicted with a long feathery fan-like tail". In fact in Japanese "minogame" is a turtle with seaweed growing on its back. This is what the major dictionaries say:
 * Koujien: 石亀の甲に緑藻の着生したもの. めでたいものとされる.
 * Daijirin: 甲羅に藻などが付着し，蓑をつけたように見える亀. 淡水産のイシガメやクサガメに緑藻がからみついたもの. 海亀にも海草がつく現象がみられる. 古くは緑毛亀・青毛亀・緑衣使者などといった.
 * Kenkyusha JE: an old turtle with seaweed growing on its back.

I suspect the writer of the article saw a picture with a train of seaweed and interpreted it as a tail.

I'll amend the article.JimBreen (talk) 22:17, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

List of fictional turtles
An anon is creating List of fictional turtles. I know there's already Fictional turtles and Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises and I doubt there's need for another article on it. But I'll let you guys come to a decision; I'm not gonna force anything. --HamburgerRadio (talk) 12:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I would agree that merging is advisable. Vmenkov (talk) 15:04, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Merge from Fictional turtles
The article Fictional turtles contains 90%+ the text copied from this very article, Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises. Does anyone feel that there is need for this strange duplication? If not, we ought to merge. Vmenkov (talk) 15:03, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

And yes, there is also a small article named List of fictional turtles - which probably should be merged in as well. Unless we feel that that small article is useful as an "index" of sorts. Vmenkov (talk) 15:03, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I have notified on their talk pages all users whom I was able to identify as having made substantial contributions to either of the two articles, and who appear to still have been active on Wikipedia within the last 12 months. Let's wait to hear from any of them... Vmenkov (talk) 03:11, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Here is the actual difference between the two articles as they stand now. The left column, is a copy of Cultural depictions of turtles and tortoises; the right one, of Fictional turtles. It seems like there is no particular "theme" for what belongs in one article and not in the other - it seems that after some initial copy-and-paste stage that saw the latter article becoming a clone of the former, people were chaotically adding new material into one article or the other. Me could merge all unique facts into one article, and then, if it's felt that it's too big maybe considering splitting it - say, having separate articles for traditional mythologies of various parts of the world (Native American, East Asian, etc) and for modern culture. Vmenkov (talk) 03:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * FYI, a cross-page diff can show the same information. Flatscan (talk) 05:04, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

what you describe is exactly the right approach to this sort of situation. --dab (𒁳) 10:16, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I am not opposed to a merge that preserves the content. If anything is merged, please be sure to note in the edit summary from where the content is being merged and to place the merge templates on the article's talk pages.  Best, --A NobodyMy talk 07:46, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

As there seems to have been consensus, I merged the articles, preserving all content, except for some fan cruft which was duplicated on other pages, mostly for the Great A'tuin. The structure of this article was kept over the less organized Fictional Turtles. Also thanks for the diff trick, Flatscan. Andrew Keenan Richardson 05:14, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Need to add this text in the article
From this webpage http://www.eedi.org.ua/eem/3-11eng.html

Songs of the Turtle

Tortoise — is the symbol of wisdom, and isable to defend itself on its own. It personifies Water, Moon, Mother-Earth, Time, Immortality and Fertility. The starting of creation is associated with the tortoise and it is also believed that the tortoise bears the burden of the whole world.

The tortoise was also the symbol of the ancient Greek city of Peloponnes, the seal of the city city showed images of tortoise. Chelone — the famous greek tortoise god, is also the inspiration for this species being called the Chelonians!

Indians of North America used combs made out of tortoise shell to signify the margin between life and death. According to their beliefs, the cosmic tree emerges from the spine of the tortoise.

In African fairy tales, the tortoise is the most clever animal.

In India, the tortoise, Kurmavatara, is an incarnation of Vishnu, it is also Kasyapa, the northern star, the first living being, forefather of Vishnu — the protector. The lower part of the shell symbolizes the earthly world and the upper part — the heavenly world. The tortoise holds the elephant, on the back of which rests the earth, and the elephant is the masculine symbol and the tortoise the feminine. Ancient Indian beliefs state that the earth rested on four elephants, which stood on a huge tortoise, which very slowly moved through all kinds of chaos.

In China the picture character, symbolizing this reptile is a pictogram, shows at the top of it the head like that of a snake, to the left the paws, to the right — the shell and at the bottom — the tail. According to the “Book of ceremonies”, single-horned rhino, phoenix, tortoise and the dragon are the four entities having spirit. For Chinese the tortoise is sacred, and symbolizes longevity, power and tenacity. It is said that the tortoise helped P'an Ku create the world. For the Chinese, as well as the Indians, the tortoise symbolizes the universe. Quoting Pen T'sao, “the upper dome-shaped part of its back has various signs, which correspond with the constellations on the sky, and this is Yan; the lower part has many lines, which relate to the earth and is the Yin.

The Chinese believe that the tortoise come out durign spring when they change their shells, and hibernate during the winter, and this is the reason for their long life. Some Chinese are of the opinion that, their script was taken from the signs on the back of the tortoise. Tortoise shells were used for witchcraft and future forecasting. There are innumerable tales on the longevity of the torotises and their ability to transform into other forms. Legends hold that, the wooden columns of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing were built on the shells of live tortoises — as people believed that these animals are capble of living more than 3000 years, and do not need food or water, and they also believed that the tortoises are adorned with the magical power of protecting the wood from rotting. The Chinese Imperial Army carried flags with iamges of dragon and tortoise, as symbol of unparallelity and inaccesibility, as both these animals fought with each other but both remained alive. The dragon cannot break the tortoise and the latter cannot reach the dragon. In China, the tortoise was also called the Black warrior, standing for the symbol of power, tenacity and longevity, as well as that of north and winter. The tortoise was often put at the base of burial monuments. It was considered that, the tortoise does not remember the day and month of its birth, so calling someone a “tortoise” in China was considered offensive. And in Tibet, the tortoise is a symbol of creativity.

In Polynesia the tortoise personified the war god Tu. Drawing tatoo marks of tortoise was a custom among the warriors.

In the Tahiti island the tortoise is the shadow of the gods and the lord of the oceans.

According to traditional Japanese beliefs the tortoise is a haven for the immortals and the world mountain and symbolizes longevity, god luck and support. It is the symbol of Kumpira, the god of the seafaring people. http://www.eedi.org.ua/eem/3-11eng.html

For the alchemists, the tortoise symbolizes chaos (massa confusa). Done --Ashashyou (talk) 05:30, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

--The line "The Chinese believe that tortoises come out during the spring when they change their shells" is clearly nonsense. It may say that on the website (though it might not, I've not checked), but use a little sense, this is a reference to a myth, not to a belief- it's like saying that Slavic people believe that an old woman named Baba Yaga lives in the forest in a house on chicken legs, or that Greeks believe that gods live at the top of Mount Olympus. Best to rephase it so that it doesn't come across as racist. Also, elsewhere in the article- I've never heard a tortoise-based etymology for the chinese insult "戴绿帽子", to wear a green hat. I've always heard that it came from male prostitution practises. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.115.58.93 (talk) 19:03, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Modern fiction section
I've organized this section somewhat. Please use this section for prose about the role of turtles in fiction, and use List of fictional turtles for specific fictional turtles. Andrew Keenan Richardson 05:50, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Green Hat?
In the Wikipedia entry for cuckold, the Chinese phrase "wear a green hat" is said to come from a practice of the era of ancient Chinese history known as the "Spring and Autumn period," when destitute men who pimped their wives wore them as an advertisement. This entry says it derives from associations from turtles, which would seem to directly contradict. Does anyone have a reference for the turtle association? TheCormac (talk) 02:50, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Hinduism
We always find statue of turtle in temple of Lord Shankar. Under section of Hinduism, it must be described with picture of temple of Lord Shiva — Preceding unsigned comment added by REACHist (talk • contribs) 05:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
In Cultural depictions of turtles > In modern fiction > Film and television, there is a bullet point addressing the TMNTs.

In the paragraph, one sentence reads:


 * Their origin – flushed down the toilet and ending up in the sewer system – echoed contemporary urban legends of small reptiles that were flushed down toilets growing into fierce animals in city sewers.[39]

I fear this may be inaccurate.

I am only familiar with the original cartoon series which began in the 1980s. In that series, they were not flushed, but were accidentally dropped down a sewer drain by a small child who tripped. Does it explicitly say that the turtles were &#8220;flushed down a toilet&#8221; in any of the shows, movies, or comics? If not, methinks this line should be changed.

allixpeeke (talk) 01:36, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Better categorization among the Continents
I feel that since the depictions of turtles is mostly categorized into continent based paragraphs that we could go the extra mile and just fully split them into 6 catalogs instead? I don’t know but I think that would make the flow seem more consistent. 좀비 브렌다 (talk) 09:25, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

"Jabuti" is not synonymous with tortoise


This children's tale is very well known in Brazil, but I don't know that it is of indigenous origin. Furthermore, this tale does not mention the word "pt:jabuti" but "tartaruga", a generic word in Portuguese for both turtles and tortoises. "Jabuti" has been used erroneously in Brazilian Portuguese as a synonym for "land turtle" (tortoise), but this is incorrect: this indigenous word (Tupi language) serves to identify only the two species native to Brazil, chelonoids denticulata and chelonoids carbonaria (mainly the latter). There is no "Galápagos jabuti" or "Aldabra jabuti". There is no equivalent in Portuguese for "Tortoise", so see that the interwiki is the scientific name.

Therefore, this part of the article must be removed. Márcia Impagliazo (talk) 15:42, 5 May 2023 (UTC)