go, diego, go ...

so ... when the folks at the darwin research center in the galapagos realized that they had lonesome george, they put out a call world wide for giant turtles, in the hopes of finding george a mate .... they got lots of turtles ... none the right breed ... but they did get others who could help perpetuate their own breeds .... one was from the san diego zoo ... and he was named diego ... get it?

diego is a turtle originally from espanola ... a supersized breed of galapagos turtles ... but the population was anything but supersized .... there were introduced goats on espanola ... and they were breeding like rabbits ... and all those goats did a number on the turtle population by devouring turtle eggs ... not to mention destroying the vegetation that the turtles needed ....

diego was taken to san diego in the 30s .. and returned to galapagos in the 70s ... when there were only a dozen or so espanola female turtles left ... and two males ... two lackluster males ... there was no breeding going ... for no discernible reason, those turtles were not fulfilling their evolutionary duty to perpetuate their species .... and then diego showed up ... he was introduced to the pen where all the non mating espanola turtles lived .... and just having a new guy around got everyone going ..... apparently it was a competition thing ... and three competitors made things much more interesting than two .... and diego and his two guy buddies have been doing their job ever since .... growing their species substantially ...

goats have been eradicated from espanola and turtles have been reintroduced ... success ... a lovely contrast to the fate of lonesome george's species ....

and .... now ... 40 years later, we visited diego and heard his story at the charles darwin research station on santa cruz in the galapagos .... and what was he doing? .... mating ... and making a big old racket of noise so that everyone knew just exactly what he was doing .... below, you can see diego in an upright position ... not with his belly parallel to the ground ....

at least he was trying to be discrete, hiding in some bushes ... but gosh he was loud!