Is This Tortoise Racist? The Internet Thinks So

Why did the tortoise attack the shoe? We have no idea, but it just happened on TikTok and set the internet ablaze.

In a video posted by YouTuber Dan the Turtle Man, viewers see a tortoise face off with not one, but two tennis shoes. But only one of them faced the reptilian Rocky’s wrath. So, why did the tortoise attack the black shoe and not the white one? Is there a race relations issue afoot in the lizard community?

Distractify investigates.

Tortoises have quite the temper and Dan the Man’s viral TikTok video is proof of this fact. In it, the tortoise displayed its natural instinct to wage war on someone’s sneaker. And folks can’t quite figure out why.

The tortoise was visibly chummy with an all-white Airforce One. The black track shoe, on the other hand, did not receive the same grace.

Dan the Turtle Man said in the video, “People have been asking me to explain like a scientific reason behind why this turtle only attacks the black shoes. I’ve had turtles, tortoises, all kinds of stuff for like the past ten years.”

He went on, “Actually, it’s kind of interesting. The reason that the tortoise is going only after the darker shoe is because it’s terribly, terribly racist. There’s no other explanation.”

Needless to say, he was only joking. Later, he revealed the real reason he thinks the black shoe got a beat down.

The black shoe was attacked for one reason — because it was there.

All jokes aside, Dan the Turtle Man asserted that the tortoise likely attacked the black shoe because it looked like another turtle. He wrote in a comment, “The actual reason is the darker shoe looks like a tortoise, and torts can be aggressive with one another!"

Problem solved.

But the comment section on the TikTok video is flooded with alternative explanations that were pretty hilarious. One user commented, "And that's how I met my best friend..."

While another joked, “It's actually because black is the uniform color for the foot clan.”