A giant male tortoise with an extremely high sex drive has helped bring his species back from the brink of extinction on the Galapagos Islands.
The randy reptile, a 100-year-old Chelonoidis hoodensis tortoise called Diego, has fathered 800 offspring – nearly 40 per cent of the growing tortoise population during his lifetime.
"He's a very sexually active male," said Washington Tapia, a tortoise preservation specialist at Galapagos National Park. "He's contributed enormously to repopulating the island."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
However, he added: "I wouldn't say [the species] is in perfect health, because historical records show there probably used to be more than 5,000 tortoises on the island." But he concedes that the population is in "pretty good shape - and growing, which is the most important".
Of the 15 species of giant tortoise from the Galapagos, three are now extinct – "victims of 18th-century pirates who plundered the islands' fragile ecosystem", AFP reports.
Diego has "a mysterious, globe-trotting background to go with his reputation as a Casanova," it adds. The tortoise was found in a San Diego zoo and was brought back to the islands in 1976 to take part in a captive breeding programme.
"We don't know exactly how or when he arrived in the United States. He must have been taken from Espanola [an island in the Galapagos] sometime between 1900 and 1959 by a scientific expedition," Tapia said.
The Sun newspaper speculates that Diego's stint at a California zoo "during the free-love 1960s" is the reason behind his "life as a Lothario".
