Talk:Galápagos tortoise

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galapagos tortoise

Blurb for Did you Know

Did You Know

...that galapagos tortoise is the largest living tortoise, weighing over 500 pounds and measuring 6 feet from head to tail. One of the oldest living creatures, they are native to the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Educador in South America, where there are only 15,000 known to survive.

For the benefit of those of us who are not zoologists, can someone add to the article a picture of a tortoise with a saddle-back shell? I'm not even sure what that means.

I think it would be more correct to call the 'shell' a Carapace - the article on carapace has a useful diagram of a Tortoise's 'shell'. It Is the rarest animal in the world. There is only 1 left —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.185.130.42 (talk) 20:34, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Se habla galápagos?

Who came up with the idea that galapagos comes from the spanish for tortoise?
The spanish name for tortoise is "tortuga".
69.230.90.199 19:37, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The reference is at least as old as the 1911 Encylcopedia Brittanica. http://57.1911encyclopedia.org/G/GA/GALAPAGOS.htm. It supposedly came from the word "galapago". The 16th century mapmakers called them "Insulae de los Galopegos" Could this be Latin? Vaoverland 21:00, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

The word "galápago" refers to a style of Spanish saddle (the kind for riding horses). The early Spaniards thought that the shape of some of the tortoise species's shells looked like the "galápago" saddle, and so called them "galápagos," and named the islands for them. Galapagos tortoises are still frequently called "galápagos" by Spanish-speakers in the islands. --DWiedenfeld 01:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Related topic: who came up with the idea that the English name of the Galapagos tortoise has an accent mark? It's fine for the Spanish wiki, but really not appropriate for the English one. I'll add a (now oddly nonexistant) redirect from the usual name, but it should be reversed. -LlywelynII (talk) 11:36, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Photo of Harriet

Isn't 620 KB a ridiculous size for the photo? I downloaded it and simply opened/resaved it with mspaint and it went down to 148 KB, and there appears to be no loss in quality. I also took a photo of Harriet when I went to the Australia Zoo in 2003, here's a scan of it (film SLR..), I could easily rescan it to be bigger and upload it as well, some comment on that would be good http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/5632/harriet8ft.jpg

The Hobo 18:45, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I prefer your photo, since it gives a frontal view. However, it lacks a sense of scale.Minglex 21:22, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Fritts 2001

Please provide an external link or citation to your claims.

Here are two:

ERNST, C., AND R. BARBOUR. 1989. Turtles of the World. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

CARRILLO, E., S. ALDAS, M. ALTAMIRANO, F. AYALA, D. CISNEROS, A. ENDARA, C. MÁRQUEZ, M. MORALES, F. NOGALES, P. SALVADOR, M. DE L. TORRES, J. VALENCIA, F. VILLAMARÍA, M. YÁNEZ, AND P. ZÁRATE. 2005. Lista Roja de los Reptiles del Ecuador. Fundación Novum Milenium, UICN-Sur, UICN-Comité Ecuatoriano, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Quito, Ecuador.

Although Geochelone taxonomy is not settled, most current systematists working on Galapagos tortoises are using separate species. I previously used the citation of Fritts 2001 (FRITTS, T.H. 2001. A brief review of the taxonomic history of Galápagos tortoises relevant to consideration of the most appropriate generic and specific names for giant tortoises in Galapagos. Unpublished report to Galapagos National Park, Galapagos, Ecuador) although it is unpublished, because it lays out the rationale for using species rather than subspecies. I will change the names back to species.

--DWiedenfeld 01:07, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Removing references to reglion in discovery section.

I am remoivng all reference to reglion in the original. I would have let it go if someone didn't decide to cap THEORY in the agruement. REgardless of reglion, and I am a Cathloic, stuff like that is strictly against Wikipedia guidelines, regardless of your views. I appreciate that it not be changed.

On second thought, I am removing the Discovery section completely because it is clear that Darwin did not discover the turtle, rather the spainish. I will research this but for now, it is gone.

Please respect NPOV.--Kirkoconnell 03:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. That pointless edit wasn't even well written. Minglex 22:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree too! Good that it has been removed. Pmaas 13:43, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

merger proposal

oppose....bad idea to merge ....species from different continents are distinct....research underway to enhance wikipedia data on madagascar giant tortoises...may have text by mid june 2006. Anlace 02:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

oppose Galapogas tortises are relative newcomers on the scene. --Knife Knut 13:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Species

Although the systematics of reptiles (including Galapagos tortoises) is not settled, you need to show evidence if you want to change the scientific names back to subspecies. I have posted two references above. If you can show better ones, post them. Ernst and Barbour is a widely-used standard, and the Carrillo et al. reference (sorry if you don't read Spanish) is a very recent reference, published by IUCN.

DWiedenfeld 21:47, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

As a professional taxonomist, I don't advocate changing nomenclature on the basis of general manuals or checklists. Your references fall into these categories. If most current users are using full species, a tortoise taxonomist should publish a taxonomic paper in a research journal revising this group. If you tried to keep track of butterfly taxonomy on the basis of general books and checklists (even those compiled by specialists, who have massive disagreements among themselves), you'd be changing the names constantly.

Also, IUCN's Red List is still using subspecies. Personally, I don't like the subspecies concept and I'm not a herpetologst, so I'm not defending using them in the GP, but I also don't like basing nomenclature on non-taxonomic and/or unpublished references.

Harriet

Adwaita has an article, why not Harriet? -24.92.41.95 02:57, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

sounds

It would be nice if there were sound files of the roaring mentioned.

I just finished and Animal Diversity course at Moorpark College in California. We were taught that the giant Galapagos tortoise's scientific name was Geochelone elephantopus. Where did this Geochelone nigra come from?

G. elephantopus (Harlan, 1827) is a junior synonym and is incorrect. That name was published 4 years after G. nigra (Quoy and Gaimard, 1824). Also, the holotype of G. elephantopus has been lost and the original description is too general to associate the name with a species (or subspecies).

photographs

I think the 3 photographs in the "Subspecies" section might be better in a different location. As is, their position interrupts the start of the text, and it is not obvious from their captions how they relate to the (coming) discussion. Cpurrin1 00:50, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Ages, particularly average, do not match

Given that the average lifespan of a Galapagos Turtle is supposed to be 150-200 years I'm wondering how 'Harriet' was estimated to be only 176 years old at death and yet also thought to be the oldest living animal. If the AVERAGE lifespan is as high as 200 years, then reason would suggest that it is obviously very unlikely that Harriet was the oldest animal alive, as there should be a respectable number of 250-year-old tortoises around. It sounds like the '150-200' average lifespan is probably made up. Can someone confirm or deny this?163.1.143.107 (talk) 12:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Galápagos tortoise/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reading through the article, I'm going to fail the GA nomination. The article fails on a number of scores:

• The prose and grammar suffers from some poor areas and others that are quite awkward. Just a few examples include
  • "They have a very large shells (carapace) made of bone which is an integral part of the skeleton."
  • "On the wetter islands, the tortoises migrate down the gentle mountain slopes after the wet season to feed on the grass-covered plains and they climb back to feed on grasses of the mountain meadows in the dry season (the increased precipitation at that altitude keeps the grasses watered)"
  • "Clearly then, they are able to vocalise."
  • "This happens during aggressive encounters, whilst righting themselves if turned upside down and particularly males in mating ("rhythmic groans")"
  • "Lonesome George is the only known individual of the Pinta Island Tortoise"
  • "In contrast, the eggs are deposited randomly into cracks in rocky areas,."
  • "Contrarily, "The old ones seem generally to die from accidents, as from falling down precipices: at least, several of the inhabitants told me, that they never found one dead without some evident cause.""
  • "In the seventeenth century, pirates started to use Galápagos as resupply base,"
  • "Overall, 2500 individuals of a all breeds have been reintroduced to the islands."
• The article does not follow the correct layout. See WP:LAYOUT
• Correct dashes are not followed. See WP:DASH.
• Many of the sections are unreferenced.
• References should be placed directly after punctuation marks. See WP:CITE.
• Also see WP:CITE for how to correctly annotate references.
• Numerals less than ten should be spelt out. See WP:MOSNUM.

I would suggest getting a copy-edit or peer review before making a Good Article nomination. The main reason to fail it is the lack of references. But the prose would benefit from a fresh pair of eyes.

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Peanut4 (talk) 23:41, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

that's because the average lifespan for a Galápagos tortoise is only 100-150 years. also, Harriet was only thought to be the SECOND oldest TORTOISE (not animal, there are species of clams that can live well over 200 years)and she was only estimated to be 175 years old, not 176. as far as we know, there are no 250-year-old tortoises.

Subspecies

Hey, yeah, I'm not going to change it because I don't know, but the article contradicts itself in saying one spot that there are ten subspecies left and in another spot it says that there are 11. Just so somebody knows.