Fun Facts About Galapagos Tortoises

The Galapagos tortoise is the largest living tortoise on Earth, a gentle giant found only on the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean. Big males can have shells more than 4 feet long and weigh over 500 pounds, and these tortoises often live for more than 100 years.

A Giant That Takes Its Time

Galapagos tortoises do everything slowly. They grow for decades, take around 20 to 25 years to become adults, and may not reach full size until they are about 40. Their slow, energy-saving lifestyle helps explain why they live so long.

Many wild tortoises live well past 100 years, and some tortoises in zoos are thought to have lived even longer. Because records from long ago are often incomplete, exact record ages are hard to prove.

The islands were actually named after them. “Galapago” is an old Spanish word for a kind of saddle, which early sailors thought some tortoise shells looked like.

Galapagos Tortoise Species and Shell Types

Each large island, and even different volcanoes on the biggest island, Isabela, had its own kind of giant tortoise. Scientists recognize around 15 kinds, which many now treat as separate species. Several have died out, and around a dozen survive today.

One of the most famous was Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island tortoise. When he died in 2012, his kind was thought to be gone for good.

The tortoises are often grouped by shell shape:

• Domed tortoises have rounded, bowl-shaped shells. They usually live on larger, wetter islands with plenty of plants growing near the ground.
• Saddleback tortoises have shells that curve up at the front like a saddle. This lets them stretch their long necks high to reach cactus pads and leaves on drier islands where food grows higher up.
• Some tortoises have shells somewhere in between.

These differences helped inspire Charles Darwin when he visited the islands in 1835 and began thinking about how living things adapt to their surroundings.

What Do Galapagos Tortoises Eat?

Galapagos tortoises are herbivores. They eat grasses, leaves, flowers, fruits and lichens, and on drier islands they munch on prickly pear cactus pads and fruit, which are full of water.

They can store water in their bodies and survive for many months without eating or drinking. Sadly, that is one reason sailors once loaded them onto ships as a supply of fresh meat for long voyages.

Many tortoises travel with the seasons. In the dry season they move up to the cooler, wetter highlands where plants stay green, and they head back down to the lowlands when the rains return.

Daily Life of a Giant Tortoise

Like all reptiles, Galapagos tortoises are cold-blooded, so they rely on the sun to warm up. They spend the early morning basking, then graze through the day and rest for many hours.

They also love to wallow in muddy pools and puddles. Lying in mud or water helps them keep their body temperature steady and may protect them from mosquitoes and ticks. At night they often rest in shallow pools or in sheltered spots.

Some tortoises have a helpful partnership with small birds such as finches. When a bird hops in front of it, a tortoise may stretch out its neck and stand tall so the bird can pick off ticks.

Threats to Galapagos Tortoises

Hundreds of years ago there may have been around 200,000 or more giant tortoises on the islands. Then pirates, whalers and other sailors began taking huge numbers of them for food. Settlers later hunted them for meat and for oil.

New animals brought to the islands caused even more trouble. Rats and pigs dig up and eat tortoise eggs and hatchlings, dogs and cats attack young tortoises, and goats strip away the plants the tortoises need to eat. By the 1970s, only a few thousand tortoises were left.

Helping the Giants Recover

Today, conservationists raise young tortoises in breeding centers and return them to the wild once they are big enough to be safe. Teams have also removed goats and rats from several islands so plants and tortoises can recover.

The work is paying off. Numbers have climbed back into the tens of thousands, and tortoises have been returned to islands where they had disappeared. In 2019, scientists even found a living Fernandina Island tortoise, a kind once feared extinct.

To learn even more about these amazing animals, take a look at our guide to Galapagos tortoises.