Animals - Aquariums - Archeology - Insects - Fossils - Zoos

Mar. 27 Arrangements will be made shortly for the shipment to the Galapagos Islands. The tortoise will be added to a collection of the giant reptiles maintained on Indefatigable Island in the Galapagos archipelago by the Charles Darwin Research station, which is under the auspices of UNESCO. Scientists at the station have had considerable success in breeding the tortoise and restocking them on their native islands. The tortoise that will be returned to its native islands is one of approximately 100 giants tortoise collected in the Galapagos during the late 1920s by Dr. Charles Haskins Townsend, then director of the New York Aquarium. The Aquarium, like the Bronx Zoo, is operated by the New York Zoological Society. The tortoises collected by Dr. Townsend were distributed to a number of zoos, including the Honolulu Zoo, so that scientists could begin breeding the large reptiles, which, although once common had become rare. Originally there were 15 different subspecies of the Galapagos tortoise. Ten of these were isolated on as many separate islands of the Galapagos chian. Indefatigable, Duncan, James, Chatham, Hood, Abington, Narborough, Jarvis, Charles, and Barrington. The other five subspecies lived on the five principal mountains of Albemarle Island. Although the giant tortoise were extremely common in the Galapagos when Europeans first arrived there in the 16th Century, only ten of the original 15 forms remain, and these are rare. Hunting and predators introduced to the Galapagos by man have been responsible for the decline of the giant tortoise, which can reach 150 years in age

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