Hindustan Times, New Delhi, dated: July 3, 2007
Why is lonesome George still lonely?
Puerta Ayora (Ecuador), July 2
While scientists search for a mate for "Lonesome George" --- the last known survivor of a species of Galapagos tortoise --- some say the effort to fend off extinction may be in vain.
Even if a mate is found, George has not been interested in reproducing in the past and may not know how, former keepers and others who have worked with him said.
"The search is a long shot," said Linda Cayot, a science adviser for the Galapagos Conservancy and former keeper of George. "George may be physiologically incapable of reproducing."
Until recently, George was thought to be the last member of a species of giant tortoise found only on Pinta, one of the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador.
Earlier this year, however, scientists at Yale University in Connecticut said they had found a male tortoise on the island of Isabela, another Galapagos island that was the offspring of a Pinta male and an Isabella female. That suggests there may be Pinta Island tortoises on Isabela.
But even if a potential mate is to be found, George has shown little interest in reproducing with the female tortoises who are kept with him in his pen at the Darwin Research Centre, "He has problems… he probably never saw a female and male of his own species reproducing," said biologist Sveva Grigioni.
Reuters
Hindustan Times, New Delhi, dated: July 3, 2007
Hopeless George
Lonesome George, the last known survivor of a species of Galapagos tortoise and one of the world's most famous bachelors, may receive a new, unkinder nickname: Hopeless George. Scientists who have studied him say he appears to be impotent, or at least to have no interest in sex, so that even if a mate was found, he probably would not rise to the occasion. "George may be physiologically incapable of reproducing," Linda Cayot, a science adviser for the Galapagos Conservancy and former keeper of George.
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This site's analysis of this news:
Three points clearly emerge from this news:
1. That males (and females) don't really grab the opportunity to have sex with each other in zoos as the scientists and zookeepers blindly expect them to do.
2. That just like the society trains people to dismiss male sexual non-interest in women, and try to find causes for it, assuming that it is 'normal' to have such an interest. --- scientist use the same mentality on animals and try to find causes for male sexual disinterest in females. And the causes are just as lame and laughable as in the case of men (Actually in the case of men --- they can easily be ridiculed and punished as "impotent", "gay" or "morally sick", but these tactics obviously don't work on anmals). So for example, in this case the 'scientist' speculates this is because he (tortoise) "probably has never seen males and females of his species mate". If heterosexuality is so natural, why do you have to learn it? If male hormones really bring about a sexual interest in females as is claimed by the scientists, then why don't they do their work with captured or "in the wild" wild animals? Of course, human societies have created such immense and complex mechanisms to force people, especially men into 'heterosexuality' (sic), and had it been natural, you wouldn't need any of that…… but it is difficult to argue using human case studies since it is easy for the vested interests to dismiss anything human that goes against their dogma.
3. Nobody ever, ever questions the assumption of 'heterosexuality" being natural, universal or 'majority', least of all the scientists. It is just taken for granted, without any need to 'prove' it.
4. That they denigrate animals in the same manner that the society trains and expects people to denigrate those men who refuse to mate with women. the tortoise in case has been called, "hopeless George", "impotent", "abnormal", "something wrong in him", "incapable", "he has problems"….. and so on. They will not accept it as a normal thing for males to not want to have sex with females or to prefer males over females. If the male tortoise had shown interest in mating with a male, he would promptly have been denigrated as 'gay' or 'homosexual'.
5. That it is easily forgotten that being impotent or physiologically unable to reproduce (or have sex) doesn't preclue males or females from wanting to have sex --- and there are enough evidences amongst humans. Even hermaphrodites and intersexed people, leave alone men suffering from erectile dysfunction desire and run after sex with women.
6. Here too the politics of manhood to force males with females and to force males off from other males is very clear. As they are making the same baseless connection here --- not wanting to have sex with a female means that you are physiologically incapable to have sex (meaning you're not a man, you're either a hermaphrodite/ intersexed/ eunuch/ impotent or have other problems related with 'manhood' or the physiology that makes erection and sex possible).
7. That a male sexual disinterest in females (and it can be said about male sexual interest in males too) is not related with the need to increase or decrease population. Some scientists have suggested that when populations increase beyond a point nature puts so-called 'homosexuality' (sic) or a sexual disinterest in females in the male members of the species --- and that male 'homosexuality' (sic) which entails a sexual disinterest in females is nature's way to control population. Apparently, here the nature desperately needs to increase population of the tortoises, yet he doesn't have a sexual interest in females. Apparently, these things are natural and just there, whatever the population levels may be.
