No one knows exactly when Gramma the Galápagos tortoise was born on the volcanic islands, but an estimated birth year of 1884 means she lived through the fall of empires, two world wars and the terms of more than 20 U.S. presidents. If that date is accurate, Chester Arthur was president, the Washington Monument was completed, the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal cornerstone was set, the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary appeared, Queen Victoria still reigned, and the prime meridian at Greenwich was established to regularize charts and time.
Gramma lived for a century at the San Diego Zoo and died Thursday at about 141, the zoo said, with wildlife care staff at her side. They said she had been supported for ongoing age-related conditions and that teams made the difficult, compassionate decision to say goodbye. She arrived at the San Diego Zoo around 1928 after coming from the Bronx Zoo, having been taken from the Galápagos.
Her long life may be tied to the slow pace of tortoise biology, says Steven Austad, a biology professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and author of Methuselah’s Zoo. “They live very slow lives,” he says. “As biological processes cause the damage that makes all species age, that slow process leads to long life.” Stephen Blake, an assistant professor of biology at Saint Louis University who has studied giant tortoises, sums it up: “You can boil it down to ‘drive fast, die young’ or ‘grow old with grace.’” He calls the tortoises “definitely kind of Prius drivers.”
Galápagos tortoises are known for physiological traits that help them avoid accumulated toxins, a kind of “physiological oil change,” Blake says. Gramma’s longevity fits with other long-lived Galápagos individuals: NPR reported on a tortoise that died around 130 in South Dakota in 2011, Lonesome George died well over 100 in 2012, “Speed” died at about 150 at the San Diego Zoo in 2015, and Zoo Miami recently celebrated Goliath’s 135th birthday.
The zoo celebrated Gramma’s 138th birthday with a “shellabration” video a few years ago. Staff described her as “the Queen of the Zoo” and “a sweet and shy tortoise” who quietly touched countless lives over nearly a century in San Diego and served as an ambassador for reptile conservation worldwide.
Blake explains how tortoises likely reached the Galápagos: they arrived by water from South America, using long necks like snorkels and buoyant, bell-shaped bodies to survive long oceanic voyages that may have taken weeks. Geneticists believe the island population likely traces to a single female that arrived about 2 to 3 million years ago; females can store sperm for up to seven years. Male Galápagos tortoises can weigh more than 500 pounds and reach about 6 feet in length, with females roughly half that size. There are 15 subspecies across the islands, three of which are considered extinct.
Gramma was born only a few years after Charles Darwin died, and Blake notes that it’s “highly probable” some tortoises alive today were on the islands when Darwin visited the HMS Beagle in 1835. Whether any saw him is unknown, but the species’ long lives make such overlaps possible.