Q. One of the main threats to turtles is the illegal wildlife trade in turtles for food, traditional medicines, and souvenirs. This has been a particular threat in East and Southeast Asia, where law enforcement is weak. At the same time, from my experience traveling in the region, most people there do not yet see turtles as sympathetically Americans do, making them more willing to consume turtles.

Did anyone you talked with discuss this problem? If so, how do they recommend changing attitudes toward turtles? - D. Nardi

A. This is an extremely tough issue, especially since people in developing nations may eat turtles to survive, or they harvest turtles and ship them elsewhere because the market demand is large and they need the money. Moreover, Jack Cover, curator of the National Aquarium in Baltimore admitted to having tried the meat of a green sea turtle.

“As much as I love turtles,” he said, “I have to admit that it was some of the best meat I ever had.” Conservations propose that there need to be economic incentives to conserve turtle populations, for example, by linking them to ecotourism packages, as they have in Costa Rica, where people pay big money to watch green sea turtles come ashore in Tortuguero and lay their eggs each August.

Q. I’ve owned turtles for many years. It seems to me they may be as intelligent as parrots, although it’s hard to tell because their language ability is mainly receptive. The related story about the turtle who came over for ice cream on hearing the spoon tapped on the bowl reminds me of Gerald Durrell’s story about his wild Greek tortoise who would come to his garden when he yelled “Strawberries, Archimedes!” (related in “My Family and Other Animals”). The turtles I had as a college student would climb around and rattle the small stones in their bowl to attract my attention if I hadn’t fed them on time, which seems like active communication; they didn’t do it at any other time. A Portuguese friend claims to have had a toilet-trained tortoise who would attract attention and “ask” to be held over the toilet, which seems odd. However, my Florida three-toed slider uses a water bowl for the same purpose — but he can climb in and out of it. Has anyone tested turtle intelligence? They must be doing something right to have survived so long. - C. Parkhurst

A. Ethologists who study animal behavior rightly argue that every organism is brilliant in the ways it needs to be. A honeybee has yet to ace the SAT, possibly because nobody has figured out yet how to attach the bee to a No. 2 pencil without getting stung; but as somebody who gets lost in her own neighborhood and, to avoid embarrassment, has to pretend she’s a foreigner whenever somebody stops to ask her directions, I admire a bee’s ability to unerringly find its way back home after foraging for miles through dense forest cover, and then to draw a waggle-map for its sister bees that tells them where she’s been.