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posted by on Friday March 17 2017, @06:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-tortoise-with-a-harem dept.

Diego has fathered hundreds of progeny — 350 by conservative counts, some 800 by more imaginative estimates. Whatever the figure, it is welcome news for his species, Chelonoidis hoodensis, which was stumbling toward extinction in the 1970s. Barely more than a dozen of his kin were left then, most of them female.

[...] "He'll keep reproducing until death," said Freddy Villalva, who watches over Diego and many of his descendants at a breeding center at this research facility, situated on a rocky volcanic shoreline. The tortoises typically live more than 100 years.

The tales of Diego and George demonstrate just how much the Galápagos — a province of Ecuador — have served as the world's laboratory of evolution. So often here, the fate of an entire species, evolved over millions of years, can hinge on whether just one or two individual animals survive from one day to the next.

Diego, and his offspring, are part of one of the most high-profile efforts to keep Galápagos tortoise populations thriving. The tortoise, estimated to be perhaps a century old, is one of the main drivers of a remarkable recovery of the hoodensis species — now more than 1,000 strong on their native island of Española, one of the dozen Galápagos islands.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday March 17 2017, @08:52PM (4 children)

    by butthurt (6141) on Friday March 17 2017, @08:52PM (#480619) Journal

    Among giant tortoises,

    Mating is a noisy process, with the males bellowing like a bull, and chasing after the females. The male’s tail guides his penis into position, and copulation lasts for 10-15 minutes.

    -- https://web.archive.org/web/20110418020530/http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/species-of-the-day/biodiversity/endangered-species/geochelone-gigantea/biology/index.html [archive.org]

    I found a video that depicts the end of the process (maybe in a different species):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8_077J5Rvw [youtube.com]

    and one showing the preliminaries (N.B. both have audio):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9B0f_NIXYQ [youtube.com]

    Good luck!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @10:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @10:44PM (#480672)

    Hawt.

  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 17 2017, @10:57PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday March 17 2017, @10:57PM (#480686) Homepage

    Jesus, the noises the male makes in the second link vid are fucking hilarious, and disturbingly human-like. And the part of the video that shows the female's face is pretty funny too because she looks like she's not havin' it.

    And 'dem shells knocking.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @01:36AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @01:36AM (#480733)

    Is it still called 'doggy style' when it's tortoises/turtles?

    I'm almost afraid to do a porn search for 'tortoise style', 'turtle style, or even 'galloping galápagos'.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @07:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @07:53PM (#480903)

    Not gonna dispute your findings, given your nickname.