My brother and I were watching the two baby Aldabras, in my care, work their way around a large garden, today, and we got to chatting about their (terrible) design.
How tortoises have survived extinction en masse is beyond me.
Not only can they be outpaced by nearly every possible predator there is, but they can be quite literally, picked up and held to be eaten without any fight at all.
There is no defense mechanism. Not even the shell is helpful.
The hard shell only guarantees a more slow and painful (extremely painful) death for the tortoise in fact. The predator, such as a racoon, cannot do a quick kill.... oh no... it has to work its way in. Awful.
Today we found one of the Aldabras flipped on her back. Can't have been more than twenty minutes she was like that, but she had all but given up trying to right herself. What sort of natural selection allows this nonsense to perpetuate?
We discussed what would happen to her had we not been there to turn her back over. A predator slowly pickin away at her while she lies there helpless? death by a slow suffocation as her intestines crush her lungs? perhaps being cooked alive by the sun?
We aren't all tortoise lovers here, we are a group of people in shock at how truly helpless these things are! it is outrageous they can be so vulnerable.
How tortoises have survived extinction en masse is beyond me.
Not only can they be outpaced by nearly every possible predator there is, but they can be quite literally, picked up and held to be eaten without any fight at all.
There is no defense mechanism. Not even the shell is helpful.
The hard shell only guarantees a more slow and painful (extremely painful) death for the tortoise in fact. The predator, such as a racoon, cannot do a quick kill.... oh no... it has to work its way in. Awful.
Today we found one of the Aldabras flipped on her back. Can't have been more than twenty minutes she was like that, but she had all but given up trying to right herself. What sort of natural selection allows this nonsense to perpetuate?
We discussed what would happen to her had we not been there to turn her back over. A predator slowly pickin away at her while she lies there helpless? death by a slow suffocation as her intestines crush her lungs? perhaps being cooked alive by the sun?
We aren't all tortoise lovers here, we are a group of people in shock at how truly helpless these things are! it is outrageous they can be so vulnerable.