Behold, my favorite story of 2020: A womanizing tortoise whose rampant sex life may have single-handedly saved his entire species from extinction has retired from his playboy lifestyle, returning to the wild with his mission accomplished. https://t.co/EONcqGcvRU— Vivian Salama (@vmsalama) January 12, 2020
I know, it's a minor story about a tortoise apparently following the impetus of its selfish genes (or the urge to reproduce, which is a bit more classically Darwinian), but both of those are merely narrative frames, too. The one in the tweet is fun because:
1) Can a tortoise "womanize"?
2) Are female tortoises "women"?
3) Can any animal besides a human being be a "playboy"?
4) Isn't the whole idea of being a playboy NOT to get the girl pregnant (how many kids did Hef leave? Was that an accident?)
5) Is trying to save your species (if that is what this tortoise was doing) the same thing as "playing the field" or even "sowing your wild oats"?
6) If we argued about this from a Darwinian perspective (survival of the fittest; "urge, urge, urge, ever the procreant urge of the world" (Whitman); "selfish genes" (which is as dead as logical positivism, but neither of them will go away)), would it be any less ridiculous and anthropomorphized a conversation?
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