Talk:Galápagos tortoise
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Comment moved from article page
editFeel too lazy to update it professionally but a team of researchers on may 31, 2021 a they confirmed a found one after 2 years of research on it. Thanks. Special:Contributions/47.27.170.200 2021-05-31T22:22:28
- Moved by SchreiberBike | ⌨ 03:48, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
Are there 13 or 12 extant species?
editIntro and table section conflict. 71.208.13.170 (talk) 00:32, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
Very large species?
editor does the article mean species of very large tortoises? 2607:FEA8:FF01:7FC0:9DC8:1C04:68F9:2C41 (talk) 18:59, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Estimates of historic populations
editThe zoologist Charles H. Townsend, director of the New York Aquarium, wrote in 1925 about the practice of harvesting the giant tortoises of the Galapagos by whalers. In The Galapgos Tortoises in their relation to the whaling industry, (https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/3SZQLTYDJJTEB8F) Townsend evaluates the logbooks of 79 whaling ships that made 189 visits to the Galapagos between 1831-1868 for the sole purpose of taking tortoises. In all, these ships took a total of 13,013 tortoises. As he explains in the text, however, these records represent about 11% of just the whaling ships from the United States which frequented these waters over a 75 year period. While no exact records of the total number of giant tortoises that were killed for food, oil, and water on the Galapagos in the 16th to 19th centuries exist, Townsend references another scientist, Georg Baur, who apparently had estimated that ten million tortoises had been exploited in this way, following his study of Galapagos tortoises in 1891, with Townsend saying that while that number may seem outlandish, it is plausible, considering what was revealed from a small portion of whalers’ logs. I have reviewed some of Baur's writings on the topic, but have been unable to find a published source of this comment. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2453285 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2451262?origin=JSTOR-pdf and https://doi.org/10.1086/275312)
The generally cited number at the present time is a much more conservative estimate of 250,000. However, I have been unable to find a specific source for this estimate, outside of web pages from the Galapagos Conservancy. Given the fact that tortoises have no natural predators and have been on the islands for 2 to 3 million years, I'm curious if anyone has encountered other work to estimate historic populations. 98.97.16.203 (talk) 17:10, 25 July 2024 (UTC)