But do we need these distinctions? I mean, in French we don’t even have the nuance between turtles and tortoises, both are « tortues ». So whether it’s a long neck or short neck turtle, who cares? Do you often need to use specifically a turtle (not tortoise) emoji where the sense of what you mean radically change? Even if you use a Galapagos turtle emoji to talk about your non Galapagos pet turtle, is that so important to your story?

With symbols, it is often better to have simplified, general-purpose representations as compared to highly specific ones. E.g. it's better to have a highly stylized "aircraft" emoji [1] than a tiny, but screw-accurate variant of a weird little plane like the Edgely Ocular [2].

[1] https://emojipedia.org/airplane/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgley_Optica

You might want to add a -sea to that search, as it's mostly sea turtles. Heavily photographed, but not nearly as common as other kinds of turtles.

I agree with the sentiment though.