Santa Cruz Island
George’s story continues; we keep getting fresh news, and he persists in attemptin to make sure his kind stays on our planet for a longer while. On this occasion it was female 106! A companion that for more than 15 years has shared the pen with George and number 107. Why don’t these Wolf Island females have names, only numbers? Could be because of chauvinism; in any case, there are many wild tortoises surviving on Wolf volcano, hundreds, when George, from nearby Pinta island, is the last one of his subspecies.
Indeed, his “girlfriends” are from Wolf, the closest place to Pinta; therefore scientists thought it had to be the closest subspecies genetically speaking to George. Today we know there is a kind of tortoise even closer, but now it is too late. On July 21, number 107 laid 9 eggs, and during the first days of August, number 106 laid 10 more. Some of the eggs had fissures, some were amorphous. Right now there are a total of 11 eggs being incubated. Seven of them at a temperature higher than 29.5 Celsius to produce females, and Four at a temperature lower than 28 Celsius to get males. We’ll have to wait at least 120 days to know if the eggs had been fertilized by George; then, we would have to wait a few centuries of breeding and selecting their descendents, to get tortoises with exactly the same DNA as George’s…but time does not matter anymore, today we can say that there is hope for Geochelone abingdoni!
Who’s been behind each of George’s steps? And also behind every tortoise of the more than approximately 5000 that have been born and raised in the National Park Breeding Centre? There is a man who has worked on this program for 35 years, Fausto Llerena, with a life dedicated to measuring, feeding, and caring for the tortoises of a Centre that bears his name. Fausto commented to me, “George has changed. He has been showing more respect towards his lady companions in the last months. And now he may even become a father”.
There is optimism everywhere: at the Darwin Centre, in town, and on board, as today we had kids from Oswaldo Guayasamin Primary School participating in Lindblad’s “Kids on Board Program”. We experienced a Zodiac ride, ate pizza for lunch and of course, we talked about George.
George’s story continues; we keep getting fresh news, and he persists in attemptin to make sure his kind stays on our planet for a longer while. On this occasion it was female 106! A companion that for more than 15 years has shared the pen with George and number 107. Why don’t these Wolf Island females have names, only numbers? Could be because of chauvinism; in any case, there are many wild tortoises surviving on Wolf volcano, hundreds, when George, from nearby Pinta island, is the last one of his subspecies.
Indeed, his “girlfriends” are from Wolf, the closest place to Pinta; therefore scientists thought it had to be the closest subspecies genetically speaking to George. Today we know there is a kind of tortoise even closer, but now it is too late. On July 21, number 107 laid 9 eggs, and during the first days of August, number 106 laid 10 more. Some of the eggs had fissures, some were amorphous. Right now there are a total of 11 eggs being incubated. Seven of them at a temperature higher than 29.5 Celsius to produce females, and Four at a temperature lower than 28 Celsius to get males. We’ll have to wait at least 120 days to know if the eggs had been fertilized by George; then, we would have to wait a few centuries of breeding and selecting their descendents, to get tortoises with exactly the same DNA as George’s…but time does not matter anymore, today we can say that there is hope for Geochelone abingdoni!
Who’s been behind each of George’s steps? And also behind every tortoise of the more than approximately 5000 that have been born and raised in the National Park Breeding Centre? There is a man who has worked on this program for 35 years, Fausto Llerena, with a life dedicated to measuring, feeding, and caring for the tortoises of a Centre that bears his name. Fausto commented to me, “George has changed. He has been showing more respect towards his lady companions in the last months. And now he may even become a father”.
There is optimism everywhere: at the Darwin Centre, in town, and on board, as today we had kids from Oswaldo Guayasamin Primary School participating in Lindblad’s “Kids on Board Program”. We experienced a Zodiac ride, ate pizza for lunch and of course, we talked about George.
