Early in December of 2016, a blue tortoise was found roaming around Florida. The cause of his morose disposition is not known, because humans have not figured out how to decipher tortoise sounds to translate to a human language, but it is probably because he was literally painted blue. The tortoise is specifically a gopher tortoise, and according to most sightings of this tortoise species, they are not usually blue. A few things could be the cause of this mysterious blue tortoise. Some possibilities are that the tortoise is just having a bad day, someone painted the tortoise blue, the tortoise painted itself blue, or the tortoise has a color anomaly and is just naturally blue. However, the last one is unlikely because the blue-ness on the tortoise looks like paint.
Apparently, this isn't the first time tortoises have been found with painted shells- a similar sighting occurred in December of 2015. There must be some strange trend about painting tortoises in December in Florida.
It is important with all issues in life to consider all the possible reasons before jumping to conclusions. What if the tortoise had always dreamed of being bright blue, rather than its natural greyish/ greenish brown color? Perhaps they listened to the song "Blue" by Eiffel 65 and really got into it. But did the turtle know what harm painting themselves would do? Probably not.
Painting the shell of a tortoise or turtle can impair their ability to absorb vitamins from the sun's UV rays and harmful chemicals from the paint could make their way into the tortoise's blood stream. If a person wanted to paint themselves all over, it would probably have the same adverse effects.
It is not ethical for people to go around painting the shells and bodies of any animal. If the person is some kind of animal whisperer and the animal tells the human to paint them like some kind of wild tattoo parlor, that's a whole different situation. But I doubt anybody has truly been asked by an animal to do such a thing.
The blue tortoise has been cleaned off, and all that remains is a slight blue tint. The tortoise is now living a normal life. Is that what the turtle would have wanted? Who knows. But he's better off now without being covered in paint thanks to an animal rehabilitation center.
