The 100-year-old tortoise who saved his species

Name: The 100-year-old tortoise who saved his species
Uploaded: 2020-01-12T22:35:14Z
Duration: 1 min 8 s
Description: He was twenty years old when a research team carried him off his home island in the Galápagos. It would be eighty years before he saw it again, and by then he had done his species a very large favor.

He was twenty years old when a research team carried him off his home island in the Galápagos. It would be eighty years before he saw it again, and by then he had done his species a very large favor. more

His kind is Chelonoidis hoodensis, a giant tortoise native to the Galápagos Islands and protected inside Galápagos National Park. The species came close to disappearing. At the low point there were only 14 of them left on the island.

A large tortoise with a wrinkled neck walks slowly past rocks and dry leaves on bare ground. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — A giant tortoise crosses rocks and dry leaves, one of a species that once fell to 14 on its island.

The team took him to Santa Cruz Island, and years later he joined a breeding program there. The work was slow and careful.

Hatchlings were raised and measured, each one small enough to sit in one hand and lie along a ruler. Over the years, 2,000 tortoises were born there.

One hand holds a small tortoise while another hand lines a ruler up along its body. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — A young tortoise is measured against a ruler, the close work behind 2,000 new tortoises.

This is where the old male made his mark. The New York Times gave the credit to his libido, and the numbers back it up. Of those 2,000 tortoises, 800 are his.

After a short quarantine, he goes back to the island he left at twenty. He's about a hundred years old, and he has been away for eighty years. Of the tortoises living there now, roughly 40 percent are his children.