Lonesome George Is Dead At 100 154
New submitter camperdave writes "Lonesome George, the last remaining tortoise of his kind and a conservation icon, died on Sunday of unknown causes, the Galapagos National Park said. He was thought to be about 100 years old."
Subspecies! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Subspecies! (Score:5, Funny)
Here, then, Lonesome George was a subspecies anomaly. He got more action than any slashdotters with a 4-digit user identifier, but I suppose that really isn't saying too much.
Re:Subspecies! (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, I resent that!
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
Re: (Score:1)
But alas, due to the aforementioned problem earlier in the thread, no one resembles him.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't get it...
*bada*bing!
Re: (Score:2)
Swine! That comment is *far too* insightful.
Re: (Score:2)
If it was just a subspecies, why were there no offspring with other subspecies?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It's a way environmentalists can get more attention. Take a species that may or may not be endangered, but isn't anywhere close to extinct. Subdivide by minor differences of no importance. Now you have lots of "species" (we'll leave out the "sub" part in the press releases) that are close to extinction.
Or even better, find a species that has a small subpopulation that is slightly different, declare it to be another species, and now it's endangered and you can wall-off huge areas of land from human use.
Re: (Score:2)
In all honesty, that's unnecessary. There are more than enough legitimately rare animals now that need protection. Not that it doesn't happen—the story Crowdsourcing and Scientific Truth [slashdot.org] from last month led to this gem, regarding the extinct ivory-billed woodpecker:
The weirdest part of the ivory-bill's resurrection is that if you look back through the past four decades, it turns out the bird has come back to life many times before. The ivory-bill seems to rise like a phoenix at times of environmental anxiety. And each time the sighting has been debunked, and then afterward some great section of wilderness has been declared protected and everyone feels better for a while.
After a 1966 disputed sighting in Texas, 84,550 acres became the Big Thicket National Preserve. When the ivory-bill was sighted/not sighted in a South Carolina swamp in 1971, the outcome was the creation of Congaree National Park. Alex Sanders, who as a member of South Carolina's House of Representatives fought to preserve the land, told me that when people ask him where the ivory-bill is, he says, "I don’t know where he is now, but I know where he was when we needed him."
DNA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:DNA? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Geez, stop being so informative!
Seriously though, thanks, it's always nice to have actual expertise in these discussions.
Re:DNA? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
The greatest achievement, of course, is Underrated Karma. +5 Interesting of +5 Insightful is not that rare. However how often have you seen +5 without a qualifier?
I think Underrated/Overrated karma isn't affected by meta-moderation, so some might use it as a way to try and shape early discussion without risking losing mod points later on when more people read later and moderate correctly.
Re: (Score:1)
I only hope they make two, so they can be Social George.
Re: (Score:2)
Even so, if it HASN'T, I'm sure some of his DNA may yet still be available, even if it requires a little digging. It isn't like he died 5,000 years ago.
My faith in scientists (boy, did THAT combination of words make me wince...) leads me to believe that a necropsy was more then likely performed, including the taking of tissues for analysis. The next question is what would we do with it? Is it possible to insert male DNA into the sperm of another tortoise subspecies? An already fertilized egg? Far out of my
Unknown causes (Score:1)
no way (Score:1)
I would've never guessed George Thorogood could've even made it to that age, what with his pal Johnny Walker and his brothers Black and Red.
DNA Record (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope we keep extensive, redundant dna samples. There's no reason we can't at least keep a record for posterity.
Re: (Score:2)
This needs a +1, agreed.
We can't know in advance just what we'd do with those samples, but we definitely should keep them around just in case we need that data years in the future... and go all "Oh drat! Forgot to backup our animals.."
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully, alien spaceships will come for the whales, not the giant turtles
Cloning (Score:3)
Even if his DNA wasn't sequenced, it should be possible to clone him (and the females mentioned in the article). I'm hoping they took tissue samples from the females, otherwise there would just be an endless line of lonesome georges (unless he could be bred with other sub-species).
I would assume that cloning reptiles is much easier than cloning mammals, didn't they do a frog decades ago? Of course it would be ironic if, due to "mistakes" in the cloning process, they expressed some long inactive part of the DNA and ended up with a dinosaur instead! (I'm not sure if a turtle is technically a dinosaur already but you know what I mean; big, scary and capable of starring in a movie).
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And after it's grown,
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.
Clone, clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.
The Clone Song: Isaac Asimov [tripod.com]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It doesn't work that way for everything. In reptiles, the females have ZW, and the males ZZ. This means when a female self fertilizes (parthenogenesis) they can produce male and female offspring, as well as WW (usually inviable).
Re:Wrong, maybe... (Score:5, Informative)
~100 years of memories? (Score:1)
Does anyone know whether tortoises of his kind have high long-term memory capability? I find myself wondering whether he would remember the loss of so many family members over the years thanks to humans who were not conscious of the ramifications of what they were doing.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
I find myself wondering whether he would remember the loss of so many family members
Not any more...
Re: (Score:2)
That would require not only memory but a great deal of understanding. I find it hard to accept a tortoise could possess such mental power. Given lizards are older than mammals were that the case I suspect we'd all be cowering in the shadow of our overload's shells.
It's just turtles (Score:2)
...all the way down.
[/pratchett]
And there's more (Score:2)
is everyone sure that he was turtally dead?
Yes?
Turtle bummer, man!
Before anyone says anything (Score:2)
I'm not going to let the minor differences between turtles and tortoises get in the way of bad jokes, so don't flipper out.
Re: (Score:2)
and what is the porpoise of that?
Age (Score:5, Funny)
"About 100"
At least now they can chop him in half and count the rings.
I need to top skimming summaries (Score:3)
Lonesome George, the last remaining tortoise of his kind and a conservation icon, died on Sunday of unknown causes, the Galapagos National Park said. He was thought to be about 100 years old.
Anyone else misread that as "conservative icon" and think this was going to be a story about a pre-Tea Party republican senator?
The secret to long life? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
You mean give up drinking, gambling, loose cars & fast women?
You might not live to be 100, but it'll sure feel like it!
Re: (Score:1)
... drinking, gambling, loose cars & fast women...
Why do you think he only lived to 100. That's young for a tortoise.
How do they know? (Score:2)
Maybe he's just having a nap? He is 100 after all.. is he wearing his slippers?
But seriously - just how do you know a giant tortoise is dead? Did they check his pulse? Did they wait until he started to smell? (I refer back to him being 100..)
Why did it take so long to get this story up? (Score:2, Funny)
Frankly, I think a tortoise could have gotten this story up on his own front page in less time...
Re: (Score:1)
Welcome to Slashdot, please enjoy your stay.
Unemployment (Score:1)
With the money you get from shill articles and oh /. can you answer something I could have easily googled...
you should pay someone to get these articles out faster than a week later.
Slashdot, News for nerds, recapped, in case you didn't see it on the other 30 sites out there. Stuff that mattered...
-AI
I'm confused (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I don't know what crazy creationists you are talking to, but we don't all believe like that. I'm sure you'll say that I'm grasping at straws, but I'm sure the bible explains most of the dinosaurs and stuff. In particular, in the Garden of Eden, when God cursed the serpent. In my own belief system, this is when God killed all the dinosaurs. And yes evolution does exist, I just don't believe that we were once single celled organisms. I do believe that all species change over time.
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:5, Informative)
The official classification is that they were subspecies, actually. However, especially in modernity, the term "species" is reserved for groups that definitely can't be interbred with viable offspring (for whatever reason), so we might as well apply that here, although it's all still hazy.
I believe they were separated by about ten million years; to put that in perspective, humans and chimps split 4–8 million years ago. Since one of the major limitations in cross-reproduction between two isolated species comes directly from the molecular clock of nucleotide change (specifically: different patterns of DNA hairpinning cause the paired chromosomes to be unable to recognize each other during gamete formation), even if they had managed to reproduce, it's almost certain the offspring would've been infertile.
Re: (Score:2)
he could have been impotent thus the inability to interbreed would not be able to produce offspring while still compatible species
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:5, Funny)
he could have been impotent thus the inability to interbreed would not be able to produce offspring while still compatible species
Nah, he was just wise with age, and took precautions so that he didn't need to spend the golden years heating formula and changing turtle diapers.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:5, Informative)
I have a pet turtle that has laid eggs twice now, most recently last week. It hasn't met another turtle since I bought it as a baby from the pet store, several years ago.
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shh! You're ruining my gig! These people think I know something!
At least one news site made the same mistake. I inferred it from there, after giving up my hunt for an answer to that exact question and assuming they knew something. Clearly trusting journalists was a mistake.
Re: (Score:1)
Any time I gain sufficient knowledge on a topic to know what's going on before the journalists pick up on it, I find articles from almost any news source with completely unreferenced, poorly explained or downright wrong simplifications to what they're talking about.
Unfortunately the topics on which my knowledge is that deep and up to date are somewhat limited. So i can't say if it's endemic.
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
he could have been impotent thus the inability to interbreed would not be able to produce offspring while still compatible species
Well, he was a hundred years old. Did they try giving him Viagra(tm)?
Re: (Score:2)
I thought reptiles didn't have willies?
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe they were separated by about ten million years; to put that in perspective, humans and chimps split 4–8 million years ago.
And to put THAT in perspective. He tried it three times ago with a female-thing that's even 2 to 6 million years further apart from his biology than man is away from monkeys.
Yuck. Must. not. think. about it.
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but breeding is not a definitive black and white for species. That two populations can interbreed and produce fertile offspring does not automatically make them the same species (grizzly bears and polar bears), any more than an inability to interbreed means they're not (ie. chihuahuas and Great Danes).
The species concept is considerably more complex than inter fertility, and is really a spectrum of traits that will always be somewhat subjective. Nature doesn't follow nice clean Linnean lines.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Species is, when you get down to it, a purely artificial distinction for our convenience. Nature doesn't think in terms of species. We're trying to apply a rational, universal organizing scheme to something that is not organized like that.
Furthermore, when you consider that the vast preponderance of life on the Earth is bacteria that don't mate and have no real c
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me ask you a question as a biologist -- I've learned too that species encompasses all individuals who can interbred with each other and produce fertile offspring. But some livings have a too weird reproductive cycle to be reconsilidated with that definition.
Lets look at the common dandelion (Taraxacum sect. Ruderalia). There are three kinds of dandelion plants out there, looking all the same. But some are diploid, others triploid and quadroploid. Triploid dandelions are sterile, they can only clone itself to reproduce. Diploid dandelions can interbred with other diploid dandelions, and their offspring is quadroploid. Quadroploid dandelions can't interbred with each other, but diploid dandelions can interbred with quadroploids, and the offspring is triploid. Here the story would come to an end, because triploids are sterile. But sometimes during cloning, something goes wrong, and a diploid seed is produced, causing a fertile diploid dandelion to grow, and now the cycle starts again. So how does a biologist classify the dandelion individual, where most dandelions are infertile, some can't interbred with each other, and only one kind is quite fertile, but does not reproduce itself during interbreding? One could define one dandelion individual as being all the plants from a diploid, it's quadroploid offspring, the triploid F2 generation and then all clones until the next diploid clone. But then we get into the "divisible individual" contradiction.
How does a biologist deal with such situations? Just some handweaving "Yes, this is weird, but you get the term species in general, do yo"?
Re:Poor bastard... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just sorta had my butt handed to me on that question [slashdot.org], so I may not be the best person to consult about the basics of taxonomy. I do however believe there ought to be a disclaimer somewhere at the start of every genetics textbook that goes something to the tune of "don't ask about plants and ploidy, you'll never be satisfied with the answer."
But to make a long story short, I would actually map the different ploidies of dandelions to something like sexes. Organisms adopt some heinously bizarre techniques for managing population size when they're wildly successful, and it sounds to me like this is a reproductive strategy that's working quite handsomely for them. It kinda reminds me of C. elegans, which is a 95% self-fertilizing hermaphrodite, 5% male species; the males exist to jumble things up now and then. (And there are certainly plenty of species with infertile members, like social insects!)
Interestingly, there are ample parallels to be drawn in computing with various techniques for jiggling neural networks to get them out of local minima.
In the species question. I'm pretty sure that the content of the chromosomes is considered a factor as well. Wikipedia has an article on the species problem [wikipedia.org] (if you aren't holding the answer behind your back, since you clearly know your Mendelian genetics!) which I am probably not yet qualified to comment on the reliability of. The hard truth, though, is that the word is archaic fluff, and that organisms fall in and out of style (mostly out) with each other all the time. A slightly better concept is this thing [wikipedia.org], but that has more to do with population flow than anything rightly concrete.
Re: (Score:2)
The dandelion strategy makes it possible to spread mutations fast by cloning and still have a plan B if the mutations don't work out positively. It's a strategy adapted to fast adaption. :)
Re: (Score:2)
You could have just said it was turtles all the way down.
A much easier answer and much less confusing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
The problem is that the species distinction doesn't hold over time, and with time being a necessary factor for evolution, the species definition is not necessarily in its best shape within the evolutionary framework.
Re: (Score:2)
How does a biologist deal with such situations? Just some handweaving "Yes, this is weird, but you get the term species in general, do yo"?
Yes exactly. Nature does not have to fit into easily deliniable categories like species. These are categories that we invented for our use. A few edge cases don't impair the general usefulness of the concept of species.
Re: (Score:1)
Whatever dandelions do, they are damn successful. You can't kill those bastards. They just keep coming back. They're like roaches, and mosquitoes.
Re: (Score:2)
Not exactly. My children have some guinea pigs. So we often harvest all the dandelions we can find, because the guinea pigs absolutely love them. At the end of the summer, nearly no dandelions are left, except for the small little plants that come out of some cracks in the yard, which we don't plug, because they are too small. If you consider dandelions weed you will find that they grow everywhere and are not killable. If you actually look for dandelions to feed your pets, they get sparse, and sparse, and t
Re: (Score:1)
I like dandelions. I pick the flowers for making wine with and you are correct. I am completely out of dandelions right now. You cam also eat the roots and the leaves.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes a turtle that has strong jumping legs and a long sticky tongue.
Re:Unknown? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but you don't suddenly drop dead from being old. There's generally a specific medical cause.
...also, another point of pedantry: it was suspected he was at least a hundred. It was theorized that may have been much older, perhaps closer to 200 than 100. Turtles are so damn rugged and scaly that it's impossible to really tell just by observation. Dying at the age of one hundred would actually have been a little premature for a Galapagos tortoise, equivalent to probably 60 or 65ish for a human, I think.
Re: (Score:2)
Those two things are not mutually exclusive - in fact, that's pretty much how all creatures die, outside accidents and being killed by external causes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Turtles are so damn rugged and scaly that it's impossible to really tell just by observation.
Well, now they can just count the rings.
Re:Unknown? (Score:5, Funny)
Turtle rings? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Unknown? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but you don't suddenly drop dead from being old.
He was a Tortoise, they don't suddenly do ANYTHING.
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, but you don't suddenly drop dead from being old.
He was a Tortoise, they don't suddenly do ANYTHING.
Evidently, they do drop dead.... that is something.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Well, if they can live to be 200 years old, then relatively speaking, 100(ish) isn't that old...
Re:Unknown? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, with no women around he should have been able to live forever. I think the scientists are to blame for introducing him to not just one, but two females. There's your cause for reduced lifespan right there.
Re: (Score:2)
They weren't turtle-wives, they were basically his turtle-concubines. The exertion could still be bad for his lifespan but would do wonders for life quality! An excellent tradeoff I'd say B-)
Re: (Score:2)
When we visited in 2009, we were told by one of the guides that she was his personal fluffer (my words). That's gotta be hard to put on a resume.
Re:Unknown? (Score:5, Insightful)
"...died on Sunday of unknown causes..." Old As Fuck. That's why. Fucker's 700 years old in dog years.
Old? For an apricot, yes. For a head of lettuce, even more so. For a mountain, I have not even begun. For a turtle, I was just right.
Re:Soup's up! (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing better on a cold night like this than some boiling hot soup! Why don't I just go ahead and heat you up a cup? It's made from turtles! Turtles that you love!
Re: (Score:2)
This reference could only be made due to the recent Humble Bundle...
Re: (Score:2)
They didn't even bury him in his own grave?
Re: (Score:3)
He's been preserved in a jar for future study.
Re: (Score:2)
I just wish he was lonesome Fred, that way we could sing the entire "Not yet dead / Not Dead Fred" from Monty Python to celebrate his passing...
(yeah, just saw the musical by Eric Idle, hilarity).
-nB
With garlic, white vinegar & some Jamaican pep (Score:2)
Ah, study. Like the research the Japanese do on whales?
You know, the ones where the results are "they taste very nice, thanks".
Re: (Score:2)
Out of all the reptiles, humans seem to connect better with Turtles then say Snakes, or Lizzards. If a Snake Species went extinct, there would be a lot less sorrow then for a Tortoise.
Re: (Score:2)
Nature has declared this a failed species. Who are we to question nature's logic?