https://www.biographic.com/sky-bathing/
"Like other cold-blooded reptiles, giant tortoises use the environment around
them to regulate their body temperature. On Isabela Island—the largest in
Ecuador’s Galápagos archipelago— Alcedo giant tortoises (
Chelonoidis
vandenburghi) dig basins to capture and store rainwater long after storms
cease. Wallowing in the murky pools moistens the tortoises’ skin and helps rid
them of ticks. And because the mud holds heat from the day’s sunshine, it helps
the tortoises stay warm when nights get chilly in the caldera of the Alcedo
Volcano, which rises more than 900 meters (3,000 feet) above the tropical sea.
Digging communal baths isn’t the only way that giant tortoises engineer the
ecosystems around them. In part because of their size (males can grow to 500
pounds), and in part because of their longevity (Galápagos tortoises commonly
live more than a hundred years), the creatures have an outsized impact on the
islands where they are endemic. They make permanent paths and furrows with
their travels, disperse the seeds of flowering plants with their poop, and
maintain open meadows like reptilian lawnmowers.
For decades, though, goats and donkeys introduced by whalers and other mariners
made life hard for Alcedo giant tortoises, as well as the other two tortoise
species that live on Isabela Island. The non-native herbivores munched through
forests of guayabillo trees (
Psidium galapageium), high-altitude tree ferns
(
Cyathea weatherbyana), and other vegetation. By the 1990s, more than 100,000
goats and donkeys had defoliated northern Isabela Island to a near-desert,
leaving little forage for slow-moving tortoises."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-inequality-aids-south-africa-tortoises-galapagos/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
