'One of our sea turtles keeps trying to get me to commit a felony': 100-year-old endangered sea turtle wants to get shell scritches from one specific caretaker who's not allowed to touch her, throwing a tantrum every time she doesn't

Mariel Ruvinsky • Writer and Editor

Jul 22, 2026 8:15 AM EDT

There are some jobs that you simply cannot help but be jealous of.

We love our job, don't get us wrong. Writing about animals all day long, looking for pictures of cute animals and for funny animal memes and for silly and uplifting stories about animals… that is one heck of a job. And yet… it also means that we are exposed to some other very cool animal-related jobs, and even we, with jobs as cool as ours, can get jealous. Here are just a few examples.

Wildlife photographers. Not an easy job, much harder than ours, but they get to be around wild animals all day long, and every once in a while, one of these wild animals will get curious about the photographers too. Panda nannies. Do we even have to explain? If you've looked into pandas for half a second, you will know just how silly they are, and getting to be around that all day long… please. Shoebill caretakers. What is a shoebill, you may ask? It's literally a dinosaur, and apparently, sometimes, those dinosaurs fall in love with their caretakers. Should we go on? People who raise cheetahs. We don't know the exact name for that. All we know is that these people bond with cheetahs when they are young and get to continue cuddling them when they are fully grown too.

Truly, we could continue for a while as it is, but today, we have a new one to add to the list. Admittedly, we don't know the exact job of this person. All we know is that she takes samples for studying from endangered turtle pools. And apparently, these 100-year-old turtles have attitudes, get attached, love to get petted, and if they don't shell scritches from the person they want right when they want them, they throw tantrums.

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Close-up photo of a brown and black sea turtle.
_{Photo is represented by an adorable model.}
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We don't think that we have ever thought of turtles as animals who like to be petted, and we feel ashamed about that. Now that we know, we will never forget it. And yes, we will try to scritch a turtle's shell someday. We must.
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It's a turtle, and yet, in this picture, we swear that we can see her grumpy and displeased facial expression. Just like that, turtles have climbed the list of animals that we love by like 100 spots.
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via Unsplash / Jeremiah Del Mar

Black and brown turtle swimming under water.
_{Image is represented by an adorable turtle.}