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Lonesome George
This is lonesome George. It's a cute name but he has a very serious reason for being lonesome. George is the last surviving member of his subspecies. He comes from the island of Pinta in the Galapagos and is more properly known as Geochelone nigra abingdoni (or Geochelone elephantopus abingdoni). In the Galapagos archipelago each island had a different subspecies of giant tortoise (15 in total). Because of us, that number is now 11, and if no mate is found for George that will fall to 10. Currently there is a 10,000 US Dollar reward for the discovery of a female Geochelone nigra abingdoni. No one has claimed it yet.
Darwins theory of evolution was partly inspired by the obvious differences between tortoises from different islands. Ironically the only reason he had stopped there was because the captain wanted to load up on fresh (tortoise) meat. There used to be two giant tortoises species on the island of Mauritius (home of the Dodo) but they were quickly extirpated about the same time as their flightless companion, by passing sailors. Read about them and their neighbours The species that inhabited the Aldabran islands still survives in the wild. You can see pictures of it here. There is an obvious difference between the shells of these giant tortoises and those from the Galapagos. There has recently been talk of newly recognised members of some of the other indian ocean giant tortoises More on the Seychelles giant tortoise species