In the Galapagos Islands the giant tortoise population is dwindling. The boy tortoises perform their ancient mating rituals and instead of being met with passive compliance as they have been for generations, they are spat at, bitten and rejected, before she walks away and seeks out her girlfriends for company. Apparently this started happening when scientists began artificially insemination in a bid to keep up numbers. But now the girls have come to prefer this method of having babies – cutting out the need for boy tortoises entirely (clearly no lawns to mow/rubbish day in the Galapagos Islands). Fewer and fewer natural births are taking place. There are dozens of male tortoises dying virgins, the most famous of whom is known to naturalists as Lonesome George.

Vicki Seal from the Tortoise Trust describes George’s ‘moves’: I came to be leaning on the gate of George’s corral to witness the first signs of passion. The female was having a mud bath when George lumbered into action. “This is it,” I thought. He moved purposefully behind her and nudged her shell with the front of his own. Startled, she climbed quickly out of the wallow. “Go for it, George,” I whispered. He plunged into the mud-hole….and stayed there. He gazed about with wise, unblinking eyes. When you’re an elderly tortoise and well, past it, clearly there’s nothing quite like a good mud bath.

George is the last of his kind. And it’s hard not to get all anthropomorphic at a time like this and start thinking of flirting skills he could use. But the passing out of existence of any species is something to be mourned.

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