We're All Sensitive People With So Much to Give ...
We happened to catch the Galápagos tortoises at an interesting moment, and fortunately the zoo had a volunteer docent standing by to answer the inevitable questions. The tortoises at the zoo are all at nearly a century old--I believe the volunteer docent said this specific tortoise had been living at the zoo since about 1933--but age doesn't seem to be a hindrance to a Galápagos tortoise's ability to mate. And the San Diego Zoo encourages this, because Galápagos tortoises are endangered, and the zoo likes to nurture baby tortoises that can later be reintroduced to the islands. Unfortunately, the tortoises in San Diego hadn't been interested in making any new tortoises for a while, so some time last year, the zoo people decided to split the males and the females up under the theory that absence makes the heart grow fonder. We happened to show up on the first day the tortoises were reintroduced to each other, and several of the males were trying to express their joy at the reunion. This is an awkward and, honestly, kind of funny process to watch, as the male has to climb up onto the back of the female's shell and kind of angle himself to point the right way, and then the female has to decide she's cool with it and "dilate her cloaca." (Wink wink nudge nudge say no more.) And then there's lots of grunting. Which is how it works for humans, too.
There are benefits to all this beyond just allowing zoo visitors to shoot tortoise porn. Back in the 1960s, tortoises on Española Island in the Galápagos had been hunted to the edge of extinction, so that there were only 12 females and 2 males left in the wild. Conservationists combed the world looking for an Española Island tortoise, and as luck would have it, one named Diego had been brought to San Diego in 1928. So Diego went back to Española Island and joined his two new buddies as one third of his subspecies' entire male population, and since then he's fathered hundreds of new Española Island tortoises. So the conservationist activities of the San Diego Zoo increased the genetic diversity of the Española Island tortoises by 50% and made the survival of the subspecies much more likely.
We're All Sensitive People With So Much to Give ...
We happened to catch the Galápagos tortoises at an interesting moment, and fortunately the zoo had a volunteer docent standing by to answer the inevitable questions. The tortoises at the zoo are all at nearly a century old--I believe the volunteer docent said this specific tortoise had been living at the zoo since about 1933--but age doesn't seem to be a hindrance to a Galápagos tortoise's ability to mate. And the San Diego Zoo encourages this, because Galápagos tortoises are endangered, and the zoo likes to nurture baby tortoises that can later be reintroduced to the islands. Unfortunately, the tortoises in San Diego hadn't been interested in making any new tortoises for a while, so some time last year, the zoo people decided to split the males and the females up under the theory that absence makes the heart grow fonder. We happened to show up on the first day the tortoises were reintroduced to each other, and several of the males were trying to express their joy at the reunion. This is an awkward and, honestly, kind of funny process to watch, as the male has to climb up onto the back of the female's shell and kind of angle himself to point the right way, and then the female has to decide she's cool with it and "dilate her cloaca." (Wink wink nudge nudge say no more.) And then there's lots of grunting. Which is how it works for humans, too.
There are benefits to all this beyond just allowing zoo visitors to shoot tortoise porn. Back in the 1960s, tortoises on Española Island in the Galápagos had been hunted to the edge of extinction, so that there were only 12 females and 2 males left in the wild. Conservationists combed the world looking for an Española Island tortoise, and as luck would have it, one named Diego had been brought to San Diego in 1928. So Diego went back to Española Island and joined his two new buddies as one third of his subspecies' entire male population, and since then he's fathered hundreds of new Española Island tortoises. So the conservationist activities of the San Diego Zoo increased the genetic diversity of the Española Island tortoises by 50% and made the survival of the subspecies much more likely.