QUITO — After stunning conservationists by
mating for the first time in decades, a giant tortoise from the
Galapagos islands called Lonesome George, who is the last of his
kind, still may not become a dad.
George, a 90-year-old conservation marvel and
one of the world’s rarest creatures, mated this year with two
females, but 80 percent of the eggs they laid appear infertile.
The females belong to a different subspecies
of giant tortoise.
A Pinta Island tortoise, George had showed
little interest in sex during 36 years in captivity. His
new-found libido has raised hopes he could save his subspecies
from extinction.
Ecuadorean scientists are studying the eggs
and have not ruled out that George could be sterile.
"We are puzzled. We will leave the eggs in
the incubators and try to find answers," said Washington Tapia,
a park official in change of George’s reproduction program.
"It’s too early to say if George is infertile, only genetic
research could tell us that."
However, hopes is not lost. Scientists said
20 percent of the remaining eggs could still produce offspring.
George’s keepers placed his eggs in
incubators decorated with religious images in hopes of a
miracle.
Scientists are also searching for distant
relatives in a nearby island, hoping to find another male for
mating.
Variations in tortoises from different
islands were among the features of the Galapagos that helped
Charles Darwin formulate his theory of evolution in the 19th
century.
Since then, tortoises have been hunted by
pirates and sailors for their meat and their habitat has been
eaten away by goats introduced onto the islands. George was the
last tortoise found on Pinta in 1971.
Ecuador has declared the islands at risk and the United
Nations says efforts to protect them should continue. Some
20,000 giant tortoises still live on the islands.
