Tortoises arriving in the highlands found plenty of forage, because the highlands remain humid throughout the year, and plants can grow year-round. Oddly, among migrators, the largest tortoises left for the highlands earlier than small individuals. Tortoises began leaving the arid lowlands as the vegetation dried up and blew away, leaving little food in the lowlands. On Santa Cruz, the up-slope migration begins when the cool dry season starts in June. These questions motivated us to begin the Galapagos Tortoise Movement Ecology Program in 2009. Why would a ponderous, slow 250 kilogram reptile, that can go without food for a year, haul itself over the landscape? Did tortoise migrations really happen? If so, who undertook them, and when, where, how, and why did they occur? However, like so many great phenomena waiting to be “discovered” by science, local people were familiar with tortoise migrations, and had been since the time of Darwin.Īs scientists and conservationists, we were fascinated by the stories of long-distance tortoise migrations. ![]() Less spectacular than the classic migrations, but all the more intriguing – why would huge reptiles carrying heavy shells migrate – slowly plodding along trails that have been used for generations? Could it be possible? Did it really happen?Īmazingly, since Darwin’s first insights, no one had definitively revealed long distance migration in Galapagos tortoises. Perhaps less dazzling is the notion of giant tortoises doggedly lumbering up and down lava-strewn slopes of tiny islands lost in the Pacific. ![]() Both individuals, among the greatest intellects in history, were puzzled by long distance migration, perhaps the most dazzling spectacle of the living world.ĭazzling indeed – 1.5 million wildebeest marching to the same drum around the Serengeti of Tanzania, the once tens of millions of monarch butterflies flying from Canada to Mexico across the Great Plains of north America, or the myriad Arctic terns flying nonstop between the poles. Two millennia later, Charles Darwin sat on a rock on San Cristobal Island, and pondered why the trails made by Galapagos tortoises went up and down the volcanic slopes of the Island. He saw them getting fatter just before they disappeared. Over two thousand years ago, Aristotle wondered where the Grecian songbirds went during the winter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |