Tortoises (unlike humans and almost all other mammals) have no maternal instincts whatsoever. Their babies are lain in clutches and then promptly forgotten (though even to say that they are forgotten is incorrect, since forgetting requires some initial presence of mind: in truth this tortoise has perhaps never been truly aware [in the human sense] of what exactly its instincts force it to do). There is no plausible scenario in which those little tortoises would possibly find themselves on top of their mother: first because they are tiny and second because their mother is no more significant to them than a pile of dirt or a largish chunk of granite. In fact it is in the baby tortoises’ best interest to stay away from their mother since (as I said before) the mother has no maternal instinct whatsoever and could easily and inadvertently crush them underfoot or knock them on their backs or harm them in some other way (the chance of this happening is admittedly pretty slim, but there is certainly a greater chance that the mother will hurt them rather then help them [which {I pray I have made abundantly clear} is exactly zero since tortoises have no maternal instincts whatsoever]). This is anthropomorphising at its worst and images like this that actively misinform people through implication are no different than any other kind of clickbait in that they convolute a genuinely interesting subject by (rather than putting forth the effort required to present something both interesting and informative) simply slapping an eye-catching title on a misleading image. Can we not simply accept that certain animals behave differently than us? This is a successful reproductive strategy: the product of millions upon millions of years of evolution (or perhaps not: I can’t imagine ignoring your children requires a lot of evolutionary finesse: but still, the fact that it has not changed into something else speaks to how effective it is). Looked at from that perspective, there is beauty here that needs not be “enhanced” with anthropomorphic implications.

[Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/4db0rr/a_mother_and_her_children/d1pe9tl)