Gentle turtle swims up to diver and melts hearts ‘begging’ for help
The turtle knew the diver could give him a helping hand.
We humans have some advantages that other humans don’t have. And one of our biggest advantages is our opposable thumbs.
We definitely have more of an advantageous build than other animals – take sea turtles, for example.
Turtles’ bodies are built to make them brilliant swimmers, there’s no doubt about that. But their short legs mean that they can’t always reach places they need to.
Now, this isn’t normally an issue for these creatures, but one sea turtle found himself in a situation where he had something stuck to his back that he couldn’t remove.
Amazingly, he decides to swim over to a human and ask for help, and the breathtaking moment is captured on video by the snorkeler for us all to see.
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The video was shared on YouTube by guy lloyd, and it instantly went viral with over 4 million views.
Titled, ‘A surprise meeting with a sea turtle asking for help,’ the footage begins with the sea turtle swimming up to Guy from a distance.
As soon as he gets close, you can see that there’s a problem: there’s something stuck to his back. Unable to do much about it himself, the turtle is bravely asking an unknown human for help.
Upon closer inspection, it seems to be some kind of shell that’s stuck to the turtle’s back.
It must be really bothering him – maybe it’s weighing him down as he swims!
The turtle looks up at the diver as if to say “help me, please!” before turning his back towards Guy and showing him the problem.
Luckily, the shell is quite easy for Guy to un-stick from the sea turtle’s back.
Guy tosses it onto the ground and the turtle seems very happy to be freed from his unwanted piggy-backer. He swims gratefully in front of the diver for a few seconds before turning and swimming back the way he came from.
Guy even manages to capture an amazing close-up of the sea turtle – he really doesn’t seem fearful of humans at all! Maybe in his hundreds of years of life, this sea turtle has seen a lot of humans in his time.
Despite obviously being a skilled diver, Guy was blown away by his meeting with the sea turtle.
He said in the caption of his video that the experience was an ‘amazing interaction’ which ‘changed my life forever on how sea animals think and behave.’ He went on to sum it up as a, ‘beautiful experience.’
People took to the comments to show their love for the video, with one user saying:
“That’s really cool ! I’m a diver. They don’t just swim up to you like that. That was reaching out for help. Way to go!”
Someone else commented:
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“Not only he realized he had something on his back that he couldn’t take care of, but also he figured that a human could manage to take it off, and that the human would be smart enough to understand what he’s asking for. Amazing!”
We’re so happy that Guy captured this whole encounter on camera. What an amazing thing to see.
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