Diego’s ‘work’ to save his species started back in the 1960s, when there were only 14 wild tortoises - 2 male and 12 female - left on Espanola, the southernmost island in the Galapagos Archipelago and the only native habitat for the species.
Now, with roughly 2,000 captive-bred tortoises released into the wild, the species has rebounded, and it looks like Diego and his mates were largely responsible. Based on recent genetic studies, Diego has fathered roughly 40 percent of all those released.
Possible it is. Well, maybe. Because they are weakened by inbeeeding and low variability, more suspecible to sicknesses and environmental changes.
Btw, modern humanity has low genetic diversity too (except some San people), because we had only about 10’000 members sometime after out-of-africa. Some San neighbour is more genetically different from the next than a south american from a chinese.
It’s not ideal but it is definitely possible.
This is a just a meme but it doesn’t take any effort to verify it.
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Possible it is. Well, maybe. Because they are weakened by inbeeeding and low variability, more suspecible to sicknesses and environmental changes.
Btw, modern humanity has low genetic diversity too (except some San people), because we had only about 10’000 members sometime after out-of-africa. Some San neighbour is more genetically different from the next than a south american from a chinese.