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Monday, October 2, 2017
This past May, scientists in China once again attempted to breed two of only three known specimens of the Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle, once thought to be extinct. Previous attempts have either produced only unfertilized eggs or eggs with shells too thin to survive. Since then, the turtles’ caretakers have fed the female a diet rich in calcium and rebuilt their enclosure to make it more difficult for zoogoers to disobey the “do not feed the turtles” sign. Upon finding that the male’s external genitalia had been damaged and partially amputated, the team has tried a few different types of artificial insemination. With a little luck, this geriatric turtle bootycall will have us hearing the pitter-patter of little flippers by spring.
The only other known specimen lives in the wild, in Dong Mo Lake northwest of Hanoi in Vietnam. There had been a fourth turtle living in Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake, a male named Cu Rua (“Great-grandfather turtle”), but he died in early 2016.
Turtles have significance in many East Asian cultures. In China, they are symbols of longevity. There is a Vietnamese legend of a turtle returning a sword to a medieval king in the very lake where Cu Rua lived. The lake is named after this legend.
The discovery of the sole known female in Changsha came only months after the Chinese river dolphin, nicknamed the Goddess of the Yangtze, was declared functionally extinct.