‘Slow and Steady’ Does Not Win the Date

It makes for unusual reading in a dating column:

Lonely male, 70 to 80 years old, shriveled throwback to Cretaceous period, WLTM female sharing at least half own genetic material for fun & frivolous times preserving his species.

Such an ad can only refer to “Lonesome George,” the last known example of the Abingdon or Pinta Island species of the Galápagos tortoise (Geochelone abingdonii). According to the Guinness Book of Records, George is the world’s rarest living creature.

Now a recent analysis of DNA of several tortoise species has suggested that a suitable mate might yet be found – a revelation that has conservation biologists more optimistic about George than they’ve been in decades.

George, you see, has done very little to help himself. Since he was found in 1971 on Pinta, he has been penned up with two females from a related species (from Isabela Island), in the hope that he will pass on his rare genes to his progeny. In the succeeding three and a half decades, however, he has shown little interest in sowing his seed.

The reason for George’s supreme rarity is quite simple: Visitors in previous centuries held the unfortunate and antiquated notion that killing and stuffing the local wildlife, in particular the ponderous tortoises, would somehow benefit the cause of science. To add to the woes of George’s ancestors the sailors pickled and ate the specimens they did not stuff (they are, by all accounts, quite delicious). The individuals that escaped the seafarers’ ravages survived in the isolated parts of the outer islands, and were only discovered after the Galápagos fauna and flora were afforded proper protection in the late 1950s.

Today, George resides at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the island of Santa Cruz, where he has lived since 1972. Despite being more than 70 years old, George is in good health and, given the fact that he could live 120–200 years in total, is probably in his prime. Not that you could tell by his sex drive, says Michael Russello, at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, who has been working hard to find George a date. “Even after 35 years, Lonesome George seems uninterested in passing on his unique genes and has failed to produce offspring. The continuing saga surrounding the search for a mate has positioned Lonesome George as a potent conservation icon, not just for Galápagos, but worldwide.”

Thanks to the work of a team led by Russello things are finally looking up. George’s “ideal companion” would be another individual of his own species. And while a full-blood female has yet to be found, Russello’s team identified a male on Isabela who shares approximately half of George’s genes. Their finding, published in Current Biology in May, raised conservation workers’ hopes that there may be a pure Pinta tortoise among the 2,000 individuals on Isabela. Similar genetic diagnostics might also be used on captive animals in zoos around the world. The hunt is on.

But there is still the question of whether George will mate, no matter how perfect the partner. Male tortoises usually attempt to copulate with just about anything, even dead turtles, says Peter Pritchard, founder of a privately funded conservation group in Florida called the Chelonian Research Institute. Perhaps George has never witnessed a natural mating and has no idea what to do. And is he even biologically capable anymore? According to this article from the Tortoise Trust, George’s sexual organs may have already dried up from years of disuse. The last, stopgap effort would be artificial insemination – but attempts in the mid 90s to collect sperm from George failed.

Of course it’s possible that the right lady will really turn him on. Maybe he could try match.com. Just tell him not to send in any pictures.