Congratulations, mommy, Galapagos turtle, and longtime resident of the Philadelphia Zoo, recently became their first mother at an estimated age of 100.
Mom, who has been living at the zoo since 1932, laid 16 eggs in November. Four of them have been hatched. It was the first successful hatching of her species at the zoo, which opened in 1874.
Of course, she had helped. Abrazo, male turtle, is estimated to be about a century ago.
Mama and Abrazo, members of the West Santa Cruz subspecies, are the oldest animals at the Philadelphia Zoo. But Galapagos turtles can live up to 200 years longer, the zoo said.
The first hatching was released on February 27th, and the zoo announced it on Thursday. The others continued within a few days, with the last one being hatched on March 6th.
Neither of the hatching has been named, but is expected to be in the public eye from April 23rd, the zoo said. According to Lauren Augustine, director of herpetology at the zoo, they do “fantasy.” (Herpetology refers to the study of reptiles and amphibians.)
“They're the size of tennis balls and they're actually pretty good,” Augustine said.
The advent of hatching is important as turtles in the West Santa Cruz Galapagos are considered critically at risk by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. According to the Philadelphia Zoo, before the new arrival, there were only 44 giant turtles in West Santa Cruz at every zoo in the United States.
Baby turtles will not share the same physical space as their parents. Their impressive size – Abrazo is 410 pounds, and Mama is about 280 pounds – poses the risk of crushing the hatch ring.
Unlike his peers, Abrazo is not his first parent. In 2011 he was part of a successful pairing that led to discovering five hatched versions at the Riverbanks Zoo and Gardens in Columbia, South Carolina.
Abrazo came to the Philadelphia Zoo on the recommendation of the Zoo and Aquarium Association.
Abrazzo and Mommy were introduced in 2022, and Mama began laying eggs in 2023. She has now laid four rounds of eggs. The first three rounds were not feasible. But the fourth was.
Once she laid eggs, members of the zoo staff were set up to weigh, measure, and artificially incubate at two different temperatures.
All four hatch rings born this year are women, but Augustine said three more eggs are still being raised.
“It's kind of testimony through the excellent care that she has to take at the institution,” said Stephen Diver, a professor of zoology medicine at the University of Georgia. “It's not easy to keep a huge tropical turtle in the Northern Hemisphere properly.”
Being hatched will be taken prisoner for at least five years. The zoo then consults with the zoo and aquarium association to decide what to do with them. If they were genetic matches for other turtles, they could either end up at another zoo or spend their days in the wild in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. But that would take a risk, said Rachel Metz, vice president of animal welfare at the Philadelphia Zoo.
“They are at extreme risk from natural disasters, potentially diseases, climate change and invasive species,” she said.
Centuries ago, the Galapagos turtle population reached hundreds of thousands, but it fell over time as it was hunted for human consumption. However, in the past half century, the population has rebounded to around 17,000 due to conservation and breeding programs.
Although estimates of the population of turtles in West Santa Cruz vary widely, Stephen Blake, an assistant professor of biology at St. Louis University who has worked extensively with turtles in the Galapagos, says it is likely to be thousands. The population appears to be growing steadily, he said.
Because the population is small and prisoner reproduction is very rare, hatchlings give a rare opportunity to study young-age turtles in captivity, according to Juan Manuel Vazquez, a biologist who has studied the aging of longtime animals, including Galapagos turtles.
“Additional turtles count,” he said.
Dr. Blake said it is not uncommon for Galapagos turtles to breed in 100 in the wild. Given that, hatching the Philadelphia Zoo is unlikely to have a major impact on conservation efforts, but it could help raise awareness about the massive turtles in general.
“In my opinion, this is breeding turtles and I'm not going to do much directly because of what's happening in the wild,” he said. “But indirectly speaking, if the zoo can promote the wonder of babies who are producing 100-year-old reptiles for the first time and use it as a way to surprise them between people and conservation ethics, then it's much better.”
