The Animals on Galapagos
Most people visit the Galapagos to see its unusual animals. The animals have had to adapt to very different conditions on different islands and they have changed so much that they have become separate species. Most Galapagos animals live nowhere else on earth. They are endemic. Communities of giant tortoises and marine iguanas share the same habitat.
The Giant Tortoise
The most famous animal on the Galapagos is the Galapagos giant tortoise. The islands were named after the tortoise because they are saddle-backed and galapagos means "saddle" in Spanish. There are "dome-shelled" and "saddle-backed" Galapagos tortoises. When they eat ground vegetation, their shells are dome-shelled. Tortoises that eat higher growing cactus have a curved shell front to allow their longer neck to reach the pads. They can weigh up to 550 lbs. Their diet is grass and leaves They live on higher levels but in mating season the females go to the lower level and make a nest. The eggs hatch after 120 days. The giant tortoises were killed for their meat by pirates, sealers, and merchant sailors. Cats and rats brought in on ships ate their eggs. There were very few tortoises left at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now all giant tortoises are protected. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Men killed over a 100,000 thousand giant tortoises for meat and oil. Men brought animals and even black rats to the islands causing devastation. An example, the Espanola tortoises were reduced to 12 females and only two males.
The Marine Iguana
The marine iguana can only be found on Galapagos. Their bumpy black bodies blend in with the black volcanic rocks on the beaches. The marine iguana is the only sea-going reptile in the world. It dives under the ocean to feed on algae growing on the rocks. They can stay in the water for one whole hour. To scare off predators, they shoot out a salty substance. They can live up to 30 years.
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