Extinct since the nineteenth century.. The return of the “space turtles” to one of the Galapagos Islands

The story of giant tortoises in the Galapagos Islands began with pirates. Since the sixteenth century, sailors began arriving to these islands, and then whalers followed, which contributed to determining the fate of hundreds of thousands of turtles that lived in the archipelago.

According to experts, giant tortoises arrived in the Galapagos from South America about two to three million years ago. Ironically, its exceptional ability to survive has become its greatest weakness, as it can live for up to a full year without food or water.

So sailors took it with them on ships. “When these people wanted to eat, the turtles were there and ready, and they had fresh meat,” Jorge Carrión, conservation director for the Galapagos Conservancy, an organization that has been working to protect the archipelago since 1985, told Ofoq News.

Within just two centuries, between 100,000 and 200,000 turtles disappeared from these islands, which were visited by the English scientist Charles Darwin in 1835, on board the ship the Beagle, on a voyage that later played an important role in developing his theory of evolution. Giant Galapagos tortoises do not belong to one species, as each island has its own type of tortoise that has adapted to its environment over time.

Some of them became completely extinct due to hunting and humans introducing introduced species into the ecosystem. The Floreana tortoise was the first species to become extinct, around 1850.

It was characterized by a shell with a clear saddle-like shape, which is a very rare feature. Discovery of "space turtles" on a remote volcano In 2000, during an expedition to Wolf Volcano, the highest point in the Galapagos, located in the north of Isabela Island, researchers found turtles with unusual shells in the region.

Scientists initially called them "alien turtles" because they did not know their origins, according to James Gibbs, vice president for science and conservation at the Galapagos Conservancy and a professor at the State University of New York. Blood samples were taken from them and sent to geneticists at Yale University.

After additional studies spanning years, analyzes showed that these turtles carry genes dating back to the extinct Floreana species. But how did the Floreana tortoises reach a remote volcano on another island?

The first is that floods may have transported it naturally between islands. However, scientists believe that humans are the most likely explanation.

Pirates and whalers transported dozens or hundreds of turtles on their ships, and an accident may have occurred near Wolf Volcano, or they may have thrown some turtles there to lighten the ships' weight before entering the Pacific Ocean. From egg incubator to return to nature Since 1965, the Fausto Llerena Tortoise Breeding Center has been working to protect these giant reptiles.

19 Floreana turtles were transferred to him after their discovery in Wolf Volcano, with the aim of caring for them and breeding them. Workers collect or obtain eggs from captive-bred turtles, then weigh them and place them in incubators.

Interestingly, temperature determines the sex of the young, and at around 29.5°C females develop, while incubators set at 28°C produce males. The baby turtles are moved into dark, humidity-controlled boxes for a month, where they feed on their yolk sacs, mimicking what happens in nature.

They are then placed in pens and fed on cut leaves. During its first years, it needs strong protection because its length does not exceed eight or nine centimetres, which makes it easy prey.

In February 2026, 158 baby turtles were released on the island of Floreana and fitted with satellite tracking devices. Scientists also used resources from NASA to determine the best locations for release and where they could breed in the future.

The breeding programs have achieved remarkable success, as the turtles that were found more than twenty years ago adapted well to captivity and produced about 800 baby turtles, with the expectation that they will continue to produce dozens of babies annually. However, the tortoises returned to Floreana are hybrids, carrying a mixture of genes from the original Floreana tortoises and the Volcano Wolf species.

Scientists have not yet found a pure Floreana tortoise, but they believe that some of them may still live in the volcano, especially since these animals can live more than a hundred years. Ecosystem Engineers Giant tortoises are described as “ecosystem engineers.”

They eat huge quantities of plants and transport seeds over long distances through their digestive system. The process of digesting food may take about a month, and during this period the turtle can travel several kilometers, distributing seeds in new areas.

Its weight, which may reach about 400 kilograms, allows it to make its way through plants and open spaces for other species to benefit from. The Galapagos is characterized by exceptional biodiversity, as about 80% of its wild birds and 97% of its reptiles and land mammals do not exist naturally anywhere else.

The islands' isolated location, about 1,000 kilometers from the coast of Ecuador, helped the species evolve separately from the mainland. Study Turtles Over the past 60 years, joint conservation efforts between government, organizations and the local community have bred more than 9,000 giant tortoises and released them back into the wild.

Here lies the lesson these turtles offer: patience and persistence. They grow slowly, but they are persistent, persistent and able to live for many decades.

As in the story of the tortoise and the hare, slow does not mean failure. The amazing resilience of these animals has allowed humans to repair some of the damage they have caused over the centuries.