After saving his species, Diego the turtle will (finally) find his island - Diego Turtle finds lost home born island!

After saving his species from extinction, Diego, a giant Galapagos tortoise, will be released on his native island next March.

About 50 years ago, only two males and 12 female giant tortoises (Chelonoidis hoodensi) were found on the island of Española, in the Galapagos. These reptiles were too few and too dispersed to ensure the survival of the species. In an attempt to rectify the situation, several specimens scattered around the world joined a breeding program on the island of Santa Cruz in 1976. Among the 14 males selected was then Diego, barely out of adolescence.

Diego Turtle finds lost home born island

A big sexual appetite!

And the young male was particularly dashing. In fact, since the introduction of this program, it is estimated that more than 2,000 giant tortoises have emerged. And Diego's libido has something to do with it because the turtle alone would have fathered nearly 800 descendants in almost 50 years!

Almost all of these turtles have since been reintroduced to the Galapagos Archipelago. And Diego will soon join them for a well-deserved retirement. The male, now over 100 years old, should be able to be released next March on his native island accompanied by 14 other breeding adults (12 females and two males).

"There is a real feeling of happiness in being able to bring this turtle home," said Jorge Carrion, director of the Galapagos National Park Service, enthusiastically.

Before returning to his island, Diego and his companions will however have to be quarantined to eliminate the risk of dispersing seeds of exogenous plants.

It is recalled that these are the islands which, in 1835, inspired Charles Darwin for his theory of evolution through natural selection.

Giant turtles have a very good memory!

It remains to be seen if Diego will remember his land. However, a recent study found that giant tortoises have excellent memories.

For this work, researchers had conducted small experiments with giant tortoises from the Galapagos and Aldabra islands living at the zoo in Vienna, Austria.

These training sessions consisted in offering turtles colored balls fixed to the end of sticks. When they bit into a particular ball, they got a reward, and when they bit into another, they got no reward.

During the first experiment, all the turtles seemed to have understood the principle. The researchers then returned 95 days later to conduct the same experiment. It turned out that all the turtles remembered their first training and chose the right balls. But the most impressive thing is that nine years later, the same reptiles passed the test again!

Tracks of 100,000-year-old baby turtles discovered

Paleontologists say they have identified the traces of baby turtles leaving their nest to reach the sea. The scene took place 100,000 years ago. Details of the study are published in the journal Quaternary Research.

The first steps of sea turtles are always events, both moving and fascinating. No doubt because these little reptiles, left to fend for themselves from birth, must face many dangers before they can hope to take off. Many, unfortunately, fail. But some take up the challenge with their heads held high. Like these little turtles out of their shells about 100,000 years ago, who avoided the bird trap and finally managed to set sail, off the coast of South Africa.

This scene - which only lasted a few minutes - was nevertheless able to be “etched” in stone thanks to favorable conditions. A real stroke of luck from nature. The researchers indeed suggest that these tracks, still fresh, were probably covered very quickly by dry sand, blown by the wind. This then allowed their fossilization.
Seven tracks, two species

Over a hundred tracks from the Late Pleistocene have been found on beaches on the South African coast. Most have been left by large mammals and birds. However, finding fossil traces of baby sea turtles is a first. They were discovered in 2016 by paleontologist Jan de Vynck of Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth. There are seven in total (spread over two sites), all parallel to each other. And all of them are heading south (the sea, therefore).

Analyzes carried out over the past few years now suggest that these traces were left not by one, but by two species. One of these tracks would have been left by a newborn baby closely related to the modern loggerhead turtle. The others, slightly larger, were probably made by pups belonging to a species close to the modern leatherback turtle. These two species were named Australochelichnus agulhasii and Marinerichnus latus.

A look at old behaviors

Jan de Vynck initially did not rule out the idea that these tracks could have been made by other animals. After all, the place was very busy at the time. However, the pattern observed leaves very little room for doubt. A hypothesis reinforced by the idea that these traces were found in coastal deposits which reflect the type of place where sea turtles generally lay their eggs. The presence of several parallel tracks also suggests several small specimens leaving a single point of origin.

These traces are also as valuable as if we had found the fossils of these turtles. As Martin Lockley of the University of Colorado and co-author of the study points out, these footprints allow us to better understand the behavior of these animals. "These, for example, prove that these turtles successfully nested on this coast, which a fossilized eggshell could never have proved with certainty. I often joke with my colleagues that people who study bones and skeletons are just studying death and rot, he says. While those who study the traces study an animal still alive ”.