No one can say exactly when Gramma, a Galápagos tortoise, hatched on the volcanic islands, but she clearly witnessed enormous change. If the commonly cited birth year of about 1884 is correct, her life spanned the fall of empires, two world wars and more than 20 U.S. presidents. In 1884, Chester A. Arthur was president and the United States had just 39 states. That was the year the Washington Monument was completed, the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal cornerstone was set, and the first volume of the Oxford English Dictionary appeared. Queen Victoria still reigned and Greenwich was established as the prime meridian, standardizing longitude and timekeeping.
Gramma spent roughly a century at the San Diego Zoo and died on Thursday at an estimated 141 years old, the zoo said, with wildlife care staff at her side. Teams had been supporting her for age-related conditions, and ultimately made a compassionate decision to say goodbye. She had been a San Diego fixture after arriving around 1928 from the Bronx Zoo; she had been taken from the Galápagos earlier in life.
Her apparent indifference to human upheavals may be part of why she lived so long. Steven Austad, a biology professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and author of Methuselah’s Zoo, notes that tortoises “live very slow lives.” Biological damage accumulates more slowly in species with slow metabolic and life histories, which contributes to extended longevity.
Galápagos tortoises are famous for their long lives. NPR previously reported several notable ages: a tortoise at Reptile Gardens in South Dakota died around 130; Lonesome George in the Galápagos lived to well over 100; “Speed,” which came to San Diego in 1933, was estimated to have reached about 150. Earlier this year, Zoo Miami celebrated Goliath’s 135th birthday.
Stephen Blake, an assistant professor of biology at Saint Louis University who studies giant tortoises, contrasts their pace to faster-lived animals: “You can boil it down to ‘drive fast, die young’ or ‘grow old with grace,’ ” he says, describing giant tortoises as “definitely kind of Prius drivers.” He also points out that their physiology includes mechanisms—what he likens to a “physiological oil change”—that help clear toxic compounds that build up over time.
The San Diego Zoo marked Gramma’s 138th birthday with a public celebration and video. The zoo called her “the Queen of the Zoo” and described her as a “sweet and shy tortoise” who quietly touched countless lives during nearly a century in San Diego, serving as an ambassador for reptile conservation worldwide.
Biologically, Galápagos tortoises are well adapted for long-distance ocean dispersal that originally brought them to the islands from the South American mainland. Blake explains they have long necks that can act almost like snorkels, are buoyant and bell-shaped—traits that would allow them to survive an extended ocean voyage, perhaps many weeks. Genetic work suggests the Galápagos population traces back to a single female that arrived two to three million years ago. Female tortoises can store sperm for up to about seven years, which aids colonization from a single immigrant.
Males can be immense—more than 500 pounds and up to about 6 feet long—while females are roughly half that size. There are 15 recognized subspecies of Galápagos tortoise in the islands, and three subspecies are considered extinct.
Gramma was born only a few years after Charles Darwin’s death, and Blake notes that tortoises alive today could plausibly have been present when Darwin visited the islands aboard the HMS Beagle in 1835. Whether any individual tortoise actually encountered Darwin is unknowable, but the species’ long lifespans make such overlaps in human and natural history possible.