VIDEO: Watch Coyote Feed a Large Tortoise

Meet Buckshot, a very nice, well-educated and loving Galapagos Tortoise!

Tortoises are simply fascinating!

Some species can even get as large as humans!

Buckshot tips the scales at around 140lbs and is nearly 25 years old.

The crazy thing is she’s not even half grown so she is eating constantly… seriously, don’t let this tortoise near your salad bar!

According to Wikipedia, the Galápagos tortoise complex or Galápagos giant tortoise complex are the largest living species of tortoise. Modern Galápagos tortoises can weigh up to 417 kg. Today, giant tortoises exist only on two remote archipelagos: the Galápagos 1000 km due west of mainland Ecuador, and Aldabra in the Indian Ocean, 700 km east of Tanzania.

The Galápagos tortoises are native to seven of the Galápagos Islands, a volcanic archipelago about 1,000 km west of the Ecuadorian mainland.

With lifespans in the wild of over 100 years, it is one of the longest-lived vertebrates. A captive individual lived at least 170 years. Spanish explorers, who discovered the islands in the 16th century, named them after the Spanish galápago, meaning “tortoise”.

Shell size and shape vary between populations.

On islands with humid highlands, the tortoises are larger, with domed shells and short necks; on islands with dry lowlands, the tortoises are smaller, with “saddleback” shells and long necks. Charles Darwin’s observations of these differences on the second voyage of the Beagle in 1835, contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.

Tortoise numbers declined from over 250,000 in the 16th century to a low of around 3,000 in the 1970s. This decline was caused by overexploitation of the species for meat and oil, habitat clearance for agriculture, and introduction of non-native animals to the islands, such as rats, goats, and pigs.

The extinction of most giant tortoise lineages is thought to have also been caused by predation by humans or human ancestors, as the tortoises themselves have no natural predators. Tortoise populations on at least three islands have become extinct in historical time due to human activities.

Specimens of these extinct taxa exist in several museums and also are being subjected to DNA analysis. Ten species of the original 15 survive in the wild; an 11th species had only a single known living individual, kept in captivity and nicknamed Lonesome George until his death in June 2012.

Conservation efforts, beginning in the 20th century, have resulted in thousands of captive-bred juveniles being released onto their ancestral home islands, and the total number of the species is estimated to have exceeded 19,000 at the start of the 21st century. Despite this rebound, the species as a whole is classified as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Regarding their senses, Charles Darwin observed, “The inhabitants believe that these animals are absolutely deaf; certainly they do not overhear a person walking near behind them.

I was always amused, when overtaking one of these great monsters as it was quietly pacing along, to see how suddenly, the instant I passed, it would draw in its head and legs, and uttering a deep hiss fall to the ground with a heavy sound, as if struck dead.”Although they are not deaf, tortoises depend far more on vision and smell as stimuli than hearing.