Last Galapagos Pinta turtle finally knocks up a mate's eggs
RJ sez, "Poor old Lonesome George, the last remaining living example of the Galapagos Pinta turtle looks set to finally become a dad at the ripe old age of almost one hundred (no one is sure exactly how old he is). This follows a false start last year when the suddenly horny George and his two Hispanola (the closest relative to the Pinta) lady companions produced around a dozen eggs that unfortunately did not incubate. Like any young couple(s) trying for kids, they didn't let this false start deter them and it looks very much as if the five eggs they have produced this year may well hatch. Fingers crossed!"
Lonesome George to Finally be a Father?
(Image: Lonesome George 2, a CC Attribution photo from Mike Weston's Flickr stream)
the latest
latest episodes
i love eating rare eggs. Ill give 100 dollars to the man who gets me these eggs.
Technically, this is a tortoise, not a turtle.
Good luck George!!!
Mark, I was going to say the same.
Please tell me that that's his head in the photograph.
This is the happiest unexpected news I've read for a while - I entirely expected him to die at some very old age as the last of his kind.
Admittedly, I didn't know the closest related (sub-)species was that close.
He is still going to technically die as the last of his species.
The eggs are cross breeds, of the start of a new species.
Lonesome George, as a land based chap, is indeed a tortoise, but seeing as that's a sub-branch of the turtle family he's also a turtle.
Thatta' boy George! Way to knock the ol' lady up. Didn't know you still had it in ya'.
Regarding their previous failed attempts to produce offspring: she kept saying "faster faster" and poor George said "but I'm a freaking TORTOISE!!"
"Regarding their previous failed attempts to produce offspring: she kept saying "faster faster" and poor George said "but I'm a freaking TORTOISE!!"
Thank you for that mental picture, I'm going to hide under my bed now.
I hope we'll soon hear about this tortoise and his heir.
#4, briski:
Errr, not really. There is no 'turtle family'. All turtles, tortoises, terrapins etc. belong to the order Testudines, and most scientists describe them as 'chelonians' to avoid confusion.
The really cool thing about this story is that as this species has temperature-dependent sex determination, the keepers have split the clutch into two batches, to incubate at 'male' and 'female' temperatures, in order to get a good sex ratio for further breeding.
I'm not sure what the point of this is. When I visited this research station, the program staff seemed clueless and amateur, essentially admitting that they did no real planning for maintaining genetic diversity and the genetic health of species in their captive breeding programs (unlike our programs for other species in the US, with SSPs and so on), and being unable to explain various practices in their reintroduction plans that seemed very unwise. Unfortunately, the station seems not only to be damaging their own projects, but is also using arguments about their "right" to all Galapagos tortoises to take them from institutions that could actually run competent captive breeding programs.
Lonesome George is an excellent example of their questionable practices. A species with only one male, and in this case, only one individual, cannot be saved. The species is dead, and yet in their outreach programs, and tours for tourists, Lonesome George always seems to play a major role, far more prominent than their somewhat more realistic breeding programs. They always present the issue as being that the species will somehow be saved if only he can reproduce, but this is complete nonsense, and is giving a very misleading education to the public about captive breeding and management of endangered species.
Their other captive breeding programs, if poorly run, are at least somewhat realistic.
Not if he gets stepped on by that mutant elephant standing behind him!
Well, yes and no. The children will indeed be crossbreeds, but given enough of them it might be possible to breed back to something very close to his subspecies. Which is a step up from "no living descendants".
Hurrah!