Galapagos Tortoise

 

Animal Unique | Galapagos Tortoise | Galapagos tortoise is the largest living species of turtle and 10e-heaviest living reptile. With life in the wild of more than 100 years, it is one of the longest-living vertebrates. A captive individual lived at least 170 years. The turtle is endemic in seven of the Galapagos Islands. Spanish explorers discovered the islands in the 16th century called them after the Spanish Galapago which means turtle. The population severely depleted in the nineteenth century by whalers on collection for shops. Natural reproduction presently reduced (and in some populations occur) by introduced mammalian predators. Important captive breeding and education projects are conducted at the Charles Darwin Research Station. Strictly protected in the Galapagos, which declared a national park in 1959.

 

Scientific classification
Kingdom:     Animalia
Phylum:     Chordata
Class:     Reptilia
Order:     Testudines
Suborder:     Cryptodira
Family:     Testudinidae
Genus:     Chelonoidis
Species:     C. nigra

Galapagos tortoises have a large bony shell (scale) of a dull brown color. The plates of the scale are fused with the ribs in a rigid protective structure that is an integral part of the skeleton. Lichens can grow on the shells of slow animals. Tortoises keep a characteristic scute (shell segment) pattern on their shell throughout life, although the annual growth bands are not useful for determining age, because the outer layers are worn away with time. A tortoise can pull its head, neck and forelimbs into its shell for protection. The legs are large, thick, dry scaly skin and hard scales. The front legs have five claws, the hind legs with four claws.

 

On the larger and more humid islands, Galapagos tortoises migrate down between low season increases that grass plains in the wet season, meadowed area of ​​higher ground in the dry season. The same routes are used for many generations, creating well-defined paths through the underbrush known as "tortoise highway". They sometimes resting in the mud wallow or rain-formed pools, providing both a thermoregulatory systems response during cool nights and a protection against pests such as mosquitoes and ticks are. They have symbiotic relationships with other animals, such as between the tortoise and the finch. They will her neck, so the check mark to pick from.

 

Galapagos tortoise is a general herbivore feeding on grasses, vines, cactus fruit, and other vegetation. It eats the fruit of the tree manzanello and fallen fruits and pads of the prickly pear cactus. In the zoo they eat natural grass, bananas, apples, papayas and lettuce. Mating occurs at any time of the year, although seasonal peaks between February and June in the humid highlands during the rainy season. In adult men meet in the mating season they will face each other in a ritualized dominance display, stand on their legs and stretch their necks with their mouths gaping open. Occasionally, head-biting occurs, but generally the shorter tortoise will retreat admit mating rights to the victor.

 

The prelude to mating can be very aggressive, and male power rams the female with his own shell and bite her legs. The assembly is a difficult process and the male must extend and tense balance in an inclined position to hold. The concave bottom shell of the man helps him to balance when astride Shell of the female, and brings his cloaca guy (which houses the penis) is closer to dilated cloaca of the female. During mating the male vocalises with hoarse grunts and bellows. Females then travel up to several kilometers in July to November and nesting areas of dry, sandy shore. Nest digging is a hard and complex task which the woman a few hours per day for many days.

 

In 1959, Ecuador declared all uninhabited areas in the Galapagos to National Park, and made it illegal to capture or remove many kinds of islands, including turtles and their eggs, in 1970, it was forbidden to a Galapagos tortoises from Ecuador to export, whether they were bred in captivity or the wild, or that of mainland Ecuador and the Islands, United States Public Law 91-135 (December 5, 1969) automatically prohibits importation of tortoises in the Galapagos U.S., because their export from Ecuador has been declared illegal. A 1971 act makes it illegal to damage, remove, alter or disturb any organism, rock or other natural object in the National Park. The Galapagos National Park Service systematically hunt feral predators and competitors where necessary. Some nests are protected by lava beads and the eggs of many of the population are from the wild and hatched and reared at the Charles Darwin Research Station. Young people up to a size that is a good chance for survival ensures that returned to their original range.

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