This is the very last female Yangtze Giant Softshell turtle in the whole world… but hopefully, not for long. Photo: Gerald Kuchling / Wildlife Conservation Society
In the entire world, there are only four Yangtze giant softshell turtles left. In the WORLD. The world is a big place, and there should be a lot more than four left, but we screwed it up for them, just like we screwed it up for a lot of other things.
Thought to be the largest freshwater turtle on the planet, the Yangtze turtle (Rafetus swinhoei, to those Latin-speaking folks) used to be a common sight in the Yangtze and Red Rivers, but by the year 2000, humans had pretty much done the equivalent of burning its house to the ground. Hunting, dams, development, and pollution pushed the giant turtles to the point of extinction.
Two of the remaining turtles live in a zoo in China, while another two live in Vietnam. Of the four, there’s only one female. Competition, if all the turtles lived together, would be fierce. The female lives in China with her man–and they’re both around 100-years-old. Over the years, the turtles have done it turtle-style (which is basically doggy-style, only slower) a lot, but so far, no little turtles have come out of the semi-frantic coupling. This is bad news for the turtles, because they’re getting pretty old, and of course, extinction is a very real possibility.
The female turtle was found in 2007, after the only other known female died in a zoo in Beijing three years earlier. After she died, the Wildlife Conservation Society of China sent out desperate messages for help, asking anyone and everyone to send them photographs of any large softshell turtles in captivity. Luckily, the Changsa Zoo in Hunan happened to have one, and she happened to be a girl. She’d been there since 1949.
She was introduced to the male, and they hit it off famously. A few months later, she laid nearly 200 eggs, and researchers were ecstatic. Their happiness, however, was short lived–none of the eggs hatched. That was the case for the next six years, much to the frustration of both the turtles and the turtle conservationists.
Researchers couldn’t figure out why, after so many crazy nights, there were no baby turtles. The male turtle was up for the task, as the saying goes. The female was laying eggs, like she was supposed to, but none of the eggs were fertilized. So, like any good turtle scientist would do, they began looking at what was going on.
As it turns out, the male was the one with the issue. After scientists drained his pond and snagged him in a net, they put him on a stack of tires and had a look at his turtle bits. In what might be the best sentences about turtle’s reproductive organs ever written, Rachel Nuwer explained in the New York Times:
Normally, the penis of the Yangtze giant softshell turtle looks a bit like a medieval weapon. Equipped with fleshy spikes, protuberances and lobes, it is designed to navigate the female’s equally complex reproductive organ, located inside a byzantine chamber called the cloaca.
In a rather embarrassing turn of events, the scientists found that the turtle’s penis had been wrecked in a fight with another turtle 20 years previous. The scuffle hadn’t done enough damage to stop the male’s wiener-motor, but it blocked the road, if you get my drift. The other turtle was killed in the fight, though. “You should see the other guy,” said the turtle with the mangled penis.
“Oh boy. That must’ve hurt.” Photo: Turtle Survival.org
Here’s where it starts to get weird. Necessary, but weird. Scientists (probably) donned thick gloves, pulled out a vibrator (reports don’t state exactly what they did with it) and proceeded to “manually stimulate” him. The male turtle, however, wasn’t into it. If you thought jerking a turtle off was weird, just wait until this next paragraph.
According to previous research (who is doing this research?), sedating a turtle and running a current through it was a successful method of “semen retrieval.” Using a process called Electro Ejaculation–which will be the name of my band–scientists roofied the turtle and zapped those baby turtles right out of him. Like I said before… weird. Necessary, but weird.
Then they artificially inseminated the female, which is awesome. If everything goes according to plan, in the next few weeks, she’s supposed to lay a clutch of around 60 fertile eggs.
Paul Calle is the chief veterinarian for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo. “Many reptiles have a change in the appearance of the egg called ‘banding’ or ‘chalking’ when they are fertile and in the early stages of incubation,” he said in a press release. “This process only takes a few days at most, providing a quick indication if the eggs are fertile.”
If they don’t band, though, that’s pretty much the end of the road for the Yangtze giant softshell turtle. “The gene pool will obviously be small, but having babies obviously would be very good for the species,” Calle continued. “Without babies there is no hope.”
Artificial insemination has never been successful with any species of turtle, but right now, the outlook is cautiously optimistic. “This autumn, the female Rafetus swinhoei will be moved back to Changsha Zoo,” said the Vice Director Yan Xiahui of Changsha Zoo. “We hope some children move together with her.”
I hope so, too. Turtles are awesome, and extinction is not. Here are some videos of turtles having sex, with a tortoise thrown in for good measure. And the Master of Disguise. Maybe it’ll help.
