- Apr 11, 2015
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Once upon a time, in a remote corner of a universe dispersed into infinite twinkling stars, there was a rock on which clever beasts invented knowing. On another rock, there are giant tortoises. Today they live on two remote archipelagos—the Aldabra Atoll in Seychelles and the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador—but two million years ago, there were giant tortoises on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. Back then, they had not yet reached the islands. Then a great storm wracked the South American coast and flung a few into the ocean, and they drifted 600 miles to the Galapagos, washing ashore with the bones of weaker beasts that starved in rough seas. The surviving tortoises ate their lifeless kin and lapped death out of a shell. And the ocean cried out, "Dauþuz haitai, andi ek immi þino wurdiz." But the tortoises ignored the ocean and for 20,000 centuries lived a happy island life without man. After their continental relatives have all died out, they're the living relics of a deeply buried past.
When European whalers and pirates discovered them five centuries ago, there were over 250,000 in the Galapagos alone, but we almost ate them all. The only descriptions compare them to chicken, beef, mutton, and butter, and say how much better they are than all of those things. No one who ate giant tortoise had ever tasted anything better. The liver, the bone marrow—every part of it was unbelievable. We took thousands of them with us on ships, but they weren't catalogued by science for 300 years because none of them made it to Europe. I wonder why they didn't eat each other to extinction—they're so slow, you'd think they'd be fast enough to catch each other.
They were incredibly easy to store: they were just turned on their backs and stacked on top of each other like plates so they couldn't move. They could live that way for over a year without food or water (humans can last three days). It's weird how much they seem designed for humans—some of them even have shells shaped like saddles, which is why Darwin rode them like horses. He wrote, "I frequently got on their backs, and then giving a few raps on the hinder part of their shells, they would rise up and walk away; but I found it very difficult to keep my balance." People still ride them to this day, but it's probably not that fun because they're so slow. Maybe we should cut off their legs, replace them with wheels, and motorize them.
If you ever see an animal and you're wondering "Is that a giant tortoise?", there are a few signs you can look for:
a lion with a shell
When European whalers and pirates discovered them five centuries ago, there were over 250,000 in the Galapagos alone, but we almost ate them all. The only descriptions compare them to chicken, beef, mutton, and butter, and say how much better they are than all of those things. No one who ate giant tortoise had ever tasted anything better. The liver, the bone marrow—every part of it was unbelievable. We took thousands of them with us on ships, but they weren't catalogued by science for 300 years because none of them made it to Europe. I wonder why they didn't eat each other to extinction—they're so slow, you'd think they'd be fast enough to catch each other.
They were incredibly easy to store: they were just turned on their backs and stacked on top of each other like plates so they couldn't move. They could live that way for over a year without food or water (humans can last three days). It's weird how much they seem designed for humans—some of them even have shells shaped like saddles, which is why Darwin rode them like horses. He wrote, "I frequently got on their backs, and then giving a few raps on the hinder part of their shells, they would rise up and walk away; but I found it very difficult to keep my balance." People still ride them to this day, but it's probably not that fun because they're so slow. Maybe we should cut off their legs, replace them with wheels, and motorize them.
If you ever see an animal and you're wondering "Is that a giant tortoise?", there are a few signs you can look for:
- All giant tortoises have shells. If it doesn't have a shell, you should run, because it might be a lion.
- They're the longest-living vertebrates, so you can wait 200 years, and if it's still alive, it's probably a giant tortoise. A giant tortoise named Adwaita was 255 years old when he died in 2006. He was born before Napoleon, before Alexander Hamilton, before Mozart. For a few months, he walked the Earth at the same time as Bach. He was actually owned by Lord Clive in the 1700s—and centuries later, his death was announced on CNN.
a lion with a shell
- They're really big: the largest ones have reached weights of 880 pounds and lengths of 6.1 feet. They're not even the biggest turtles though! The biggest is actually a kind of a sea turtle, called the leatherback sea turtle. Behold this disgusting monstrosity:
- They have a special internal bladder that stores water so perfectly that it's drinkable: When you split them open to cook them, you also get a gallon of fresh water. So if it's a giant tortoise, either you should drink the water or I'm trolling you.
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