Dogs and cats follow family members around, and will sit with them and sleep in bed with them. Also pets don't "die" like elderly peeps do. I've had pets that I got in the first generation and it is now 4th gen in several of my families and the original pet is still around. If you figure the average life span (from inheriting the house to death) is about 30 or 35 years, the pets are now older than 60 people years old. I could see that if they were birds... but dogs and cats? Wow.
Don't know if turtles do the same as - follow, sit and sleep with the people.
Yeah the turtle DOES do all of that except sit. It's hard to tell most of the time because the turtle moves slowly but it'll crawl up into bed with people while they're sleeping.