David LinckHow does the Galapagos tortoise survive from the severe environment? Every disadvantage you think about Galapagos: slow creeping, bulky legs, weak defense, and so on. These may make you believe they couldn’t adapt to this changing circumstances around them. However, the fact is they survived and lived healthily by their own living skills. Let’s observe this special creature from a biological perspective.
- Evolutionary history
They are amazing because their existence is exactly a representative demonstration to the theory of evolution and selection of Darwin. We can see that after a long-term experience of evolution, the tortoise living on the Galapagos Islands also face the remarkable change of environment. They adapted to the new environment have survived, and the ones failed to live on had been abandoned, by the nature. For example, Saddled-backed tortoises are adaptable in hotter, drier islands with sparse vegetation, and domed tortoises are likely to inhabit the cooler, wetter islands. On the other hand, the evolved giant figure also protects them from the attack of many predators, at the same time they always gain the upper hand when competing the other animals with food and territory.
The tortoise now spread around the archipelago, and evolved to different races in different shape from the original integrated species. It’s not exaggerating to say it is a very successful example of evolution and designed work by our nature.
- Reproduction
It occurs that mating usually happens between January and August. Firstly, if an adult male want to conquer a female, he must preliminarily conquer a male. Two mature males meet and each of them will rise up on legs, stretch up necks in order to take the dominant place, finally ending with the stronger and taller male winning the victory.Secondly, the winning tortoise got the privilege to mate with the female.
After mating, it comes the phase of giving birth to baby tortoise, which the females walk a long way to get to the beach and choose the right place-dry and sandy to lay legs. Note that nest digging is a difficult task, taking several hours, sometimes several days to complete it. Usually the females dig a 30 centimeter deep hole and lay about sixteen eggs as big as tennis balls into the hole.
It’s really sweet to imagine what their life is about, because they are such a mysterious creature! After you read this article, you must gain more information about it. If you have a chance, go to see them.
