Marine biologists are sounding the alarm on behalf of the Galápagos Islands’ marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus). Without tightened regulations on the often abused exotic pet trade, researchers warn that a recent “strange uptick” in illegal animal trafficking combined with this season’s Super El Niño is further endangering the already vulnerable reptiles living on the Eastern Pacific archipelago.
“They are already shrinking in size and facing mass mortality, either by starvation or by trying to swim longer distances in search of food,” Juan José Alava, a marine ecotoxicologist at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, explained in a recent letter published in Science.
The marine iguana family encompasses at least 11 known subspecies, each specially evolved to live on the Galápagos Islands. They are the only reptiles in the world capable of foraging underwater for macroalgae, which makes up the majority of their diet. Although iguana colonies remain relatively stable, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) still lists them as Vulnerable due to predators, mounting pollution issues, and cyclical El Niño events. Ten of the 11 recognized subspecies are also locally classified as either Critically Endangered or Endangered. Sale of iguanas is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), but a recent uptick in illegal trafficking along with increasingly dramatic climate shifts is adding more stress to the situation.
Ecuadorian authorities have caught people attempting to smuggle iguanas multiple times this year. In May, officials discovered at least a dozen animals inside handbags at an airport that were bound for illegal markets. Law enforcement found another 32 tied up inside a suitcase intended for similar buyers in August. Many trafficked iguanas won’t survive the stress and rough handling, but even rescued reptiles face challenges. Because subspecies are evolved to live on specific islands, ecologists must test each rescued iguana’s DNA to determine where to return them.
Smuggling hasn’t been seen within the Galápagos Marine Reserve itself, but Alava and his colleagues theorize that smugglers are capturing iguanas near Ecuador’s coastal shorelines. Traffickers then obtain CITES permits that falsely declare the reptiles are captive bred in other nations, even though no such authorized facilities actually exist. Often, smugglers are only engaged in the industry out of financial necessity or coercion.
“Artisinal fishing communities from Galapagos and coastal Ecuador, who are facing severe socioeconomic hardship and expanding organized crime activities, may feel pressured to participate in this international black market,” the letter’s authors wrote.
Conservationists are now urging a multifaceted approach to protect the animals. CITES representatives need to close existing permit loopholes, while the Ecuadorian government should focus on simultaneously breaking up organized crime and providing economic aid to struggling communities.
“Maintaining global ocean observing systems is essential, and extreme marine event forecasting and response capabilities are improving,” the authors wrote. “But responsibility and action remain fragmented across environmental [organizations], fisheries, and emergency management, and public health agencies.”
Griffith Observatory is one of Los Angeles’s most iconic landmarks. Part of the city’s sprawling “urban wilderness,” Griffith Park, the free public science center boasts dozens of exhibits and displays, including one of the first planetariums in the United States and the most-viewed telescope in the world.
But there’s a dark secret behind Griffith Observatory’s founding. It might never have been built if it weren’t for the desperation of its namesake, Griffith J. Griffith, a wealthy real estate magnate who had once been a pillar of his community. In 1906, when Griffith first proposed the observatory as a gift to the city, he was hoping to salvage his reputation after the shocking crime he had committed three years earlier: the attempted murder of his wife.
Who was Griffith J. Griffith?
Born in Wales, Griffith immigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1865, initially settling in Pennsylvania. A few years later he moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a business journalist covering the West Coast mining industry. Griffith then used his expert knowledge of mining to work as a consultant for mining companies, earning himself a fortune.
In 1882, Griffith moved to the rapidly growing city of Los Angeles and purchased 4,000 acres of the Rancho Los Feliz land grant with an eye toward development. He rented out parcels of this land for various businesses, from homes and hotels to an ostrich farm. (Although the farm eventually failed, it proved a popular tourist attraction: Some of California’s first passenger railways were built to bring sightseers to the ostriches.)
Acquaintances described Griffith as “a roly-poly pompous little fellow” and “an egomaniac.” Known for his brash personality and humor, he dressed flamboyantly, favoring a gold-handled cane and a top hat. Griffith also called himself “Colonel,” despite having never served in the military. His grandiosity led to the mocking nickname, “the Prince of Wales.”
Acquaintances described Griffith as “a roly-poly pompous little fellow” and “an egomaniac.” Image: Public Domain
Griffith’s doomed marriage
By the mid-1880s, Griffith was a member of Los Angeles high society. He rubbed shoulders with fellow wealthy developers whose names are still visible on city maps, such as the Bixbys, the Sepúlvedas, and the Mesmers.
While some of these families traced their lineages back to the colonial aristocrats of Mexico or New England, the Mesmers, like Griffith, were recent European immigrants, having come to the United States from Alsace, France. Griffith soon began courting 22-year-old Christina Mesmer, nicknamed Tina, who was considered one of the city’s most eligible young ladies.
Not only did Tina have prominent parents, she had personally inherited a major property from a childless family friend in 1885. Known as “the Briswalter tract” after the previous owner, Andre Briswalter, it was 240 acres in a prime development area just south of downtown L.A. Worth at least 35 million dollars today, the land was used by Briswalter himself for fruit orchards, but now encompasses the neighborhood of Historic South-Central.
Griffith knew that the Briswalter land would be his if he married Tina Mesmer, and made no secret of his motives. Three weeks before they were to be married, Tina informed Griffith that she had transferred partial ownership of the property to her father. It is unknown if Tina performed this transfer willingly, but Griffith wrote to her of his fear that she had become her father’s “pawn.” In the same letter, Griffith threatened to call off the wedding unless he was made sole owner.
Wishing to avoid scandal, the Mesmers relented and the wedding proceeded in 1887. However, the rocky start to the marriage was an ill omen of things to come. In public, the two presented a harmonious image of a high society couple. In private, tensions plagued their marriage, including over religion (the Mesmers were Catholic, while Griffith was Protestant).
In 1887, Christina ‘Tina’ Mesmer, a young Los Angeles socialite, married Griffith. Image: Public Domain
At home, Griffith was paranoid and menacing. Despite publicly supporting the Temperance movement, he was secretly an alcoholic, and his drinking worsened his behavior. Griffith’s paranoia reached a fever pitch after a narrow brush with death in 1891.
While the Griffiths were in a carriage on their way to the grave of Tina’s recently-deceased mother, someone fired a gun at them from another carriage, grazing Griffith’s head. The attacker, who fatally shot himself before he could be apprehended, turned out to be an investor from the failed ostrich farm, who had been ruined and owed Griffith back rent.
How the idea of Griffith Park first emerged
In 1896, despite his private troubles, Griffith was at the height of his power. Ever-ambitious, he sought a way to immortalize himself. He was also flush with cash, having sold off most of the Briswalter tract acquired from Tina, but still owed a tax debt that he hoped the city would forgive. That Christmas, the Griffiths donated more than 3,000 acres of Rancho Los Feliz to the city of Los Angeles for the formation of a public park, to be called, of course, Griffith Park.
While Griffith spoke of wanting to give back to the community and create “a place of rest and relaxation for the masses,” generosity may not have been his only motive. Critics called the huge donation a tax scheme, and pointed out that Griffith could afford to part with the land. Not only did he have Tina’s fortune, he had already rented out the most profitable parts of the Rancho Los Feliz, and what remained was no good for purposes like farming.
Griffith shoots his wife Mrs. Tina Griffith
The more his influence grew, the more unstable Griffith became. According to Tina’s later testimony at Griffith’s trial, he pulled a gun on her for the first time in May 1903, when she threatened to leave him during an argument. “He is very proud and did not want the public to know” of their marital disputes, she said.
A few months later, the Griffiths stayed at the Hotel Arcadia in Santa Monica with their only child, 15 year-old Vandell. Tina hoped that a family vacation would calm Griffith’s nerves, but Griffith was on edge. He repeatedly asked servers in the hotel restaurant to change his food and drink, believing it had been poisoned.
On the last night of the trip, Vandell Griffith went to the beach with the hotel owner’s son, leaving his parents alone in the hotel room. While Tina was packing, Griffith approached her with a gun in his hand. He forced her to kneel and started asking her about the death of Andre Briswalter years earlier.
Apparently, Griffith now suspected that the Mesmers had poisoned Briswalter, and planned to poison him next. Griffith then asked Tina if she had ever been unfaithful. She assured him that she had not, and that Briswalter’s death had been natural, but he fired off a bullet at point-blank range.
Tina Mesmer Griffith survives
Tina leapt from the window and rolled to safety, breaking her shoulder in the fall. Hotel staff soon found her and took her to a doctor. A surgeon who attended her injuries later reported that “if the bullet had struck Mrs. Griffith one-sixteenth of an inch below where it did, it would have gone through the eye socket and into the brain.”
Tina lost her right eye, and due to the risks of infection and blood loss, doctors were not sure whether she would survive. Miraculously, she did.
Police began searching for Griffith immediately, but it was three days before they found him at a nearby bar in the midst of an alcoholic bender. The subsequent trial became a massive media scandal. Tina took the witness stand wearing a veil and black glasses to hide her injuries.
A sketch published in The Los Angeles Times shows how Christina ‘Tina’ Mesmer wore a veil in the courtroom to conceal her injuries. Image: Public Domain
When she entered the courtroom, “she looked at [Griffith] casually as though he were someone she had never seen,” the Los Angeles Times reported, while Griffith remained motionless, listening intently. Tina testified for an hour before fainting from exhaustion, returning later that day for a second round of questioning. Only then did the extent of the Griffiths’ private problems become public knowledge.
The outcome of the trial
Griffith’s attorneys argued that he was not in his right mind; instead, his drinking had made him delusional, a case of “alcoholic insanity.” Griffith was fined and sentenced to just two years in prison.
Tina was granted a divorce on grounds of cruelty, one of the few legal justifications for divorce in 1903. She also received a cash settlement and full custody of Vandell, but she was unable to receive half of the estate, as she had asked for.
The couple’s properties had long been under Griffith’s name only, including what remained of Tina’s inheritance. As one of her lawyers told the Los Angeles Times, the law prevented her from obtaining “any approximation of what really should be hers.” However, Tina was left with enough to live on, and Griffith agreed to pay for Vandell’s future education as long as he didn’t attend a Catholic university.
The aftermath
After the trial, Tina moved in with her sister. Though she stepped away from city development, she devoted herself to Catholic charities and social events. She was apparently a big fan of whist, a four-player card game. She never remarried and continued to be known as “Mrs. Griffith” until her death in 1948 at the age of 86.
When Griffith emerged from San Quentin in December 1906, he appeared to be a changed man. He gave up drinking and devoted himself to the cause of prison reform, as well as improving facilities for visitors in the park that bore his name. He also came up with an idea for a second “Christmas gift” to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the Los Angeles public: a free science center and an outdoor theater.
However, the city was now reluctant to associate with him. As one newspaper op-ed stated, Los Angeles was “neither so poor nor so lost to [a] sense of public decency that it can afford to accept this money.”
Griffith died of liver disease in 1919 without seeing this dream become reality, but he bequeathed the funds for the Observatory and the nearby Greek Theatre to the city in his will. The project would finally move forward more than ten years after his death.
It was Griffith and Tina’s son, Vandell Griffith, who oversaw the construction of the Observatory as president of the Los Angeles Park Board. (Vandell would later become a city police commissioner, and was described in a 1951 newspaper as “a dead honest man.”)
When the Griffith Observatory opened in 1935, it was an instant success, part of a new wave of interactive museums that made astronomy and other sciences accessible to the public. And it all goes back to a man who destroyed his own reputation. It’s a strange chapter in the history of Los Angeles, and a reminder that the legacies people leave can be complicated.
In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, most surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation.
An endangered mouse is slowly returning to the Golden State. Pacific pocket mice (Perognathus longimembris pacificus) are about as large as a human thumb and about as heavy as three pennies. Unsurprisingly, they are the smallest mammals in North America and are one of many pocket mouse subspecies. But they are also one of the most endangered.
Pacific pocket mice have lived in and around Los Angeles and San Diego but before 1993, the species was believed to be extinct. When a small population was found in Orange County, the tiny rodent was listed as endangered.
Today, there are only three original populations in the wild, but groups are being reintroduced into the wild. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and their partners recently established their third reintroduced population of Pacific pocket mice at North San Mateo, a training area within Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
“This spring, we provided 50 mice to USGS [United States Geographical Survey] to establish a third reintroduced population at North San Mateo, and we’re very encouraged that reproduction has already been documented there,” Debra Shier, associate director of recovery ecology for San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, tells Popular Science.
The two other reintroduced populations are also doing well. They are the Water Tank population in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and the Wire Mountain population on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Mice there are reproducing, and the Water Tank population has a high to very high density. Additionally, the Wire Mountain population has a medium to high density, according to Shier.
The Pacific pocket mouse’s recovery is good news for the subspecies, but also for their ecosystem. Their burrows contribute to improving soil hydrology and nutrient cycling and also shelter other species, Shier added in a statement. An additional population helps return these crucial ecological functions to their native coastal ecosystems.
Since the start of its Pacific Pocket Mouse Conservation Program in 2006, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has released over 500 of these tiny mammals into the wild, adding them to both new and established populations.
“We’re now beginning to allow the established populations to expand beyond their original fenced release areas. That’s especially important this year because of the potential for heavy winter rains associated with the forecasted El Niño,” Shier says. “We’ve found that high winter precipitation can be associated with lower overwinter survival, so allowing mice to spread out and settle in a larger area may help make these populations more resilient.”
The greatest threat to Pacific pocket mice is the loss and fragmentation of their specialized coastal habitat. Habitat loss diminishes their range and makes them vulnerable to inbreeding.
“So, recovery isn’t simply about breeding more mice,” Shier points out. “We need to protect and restore suitable habitat, establish additional populations, and maintain genetic diversity across those populations.”
As the summer drew to a close, aerial surveyors with the New England Aquarium saw more than 2,000 animals across 15 different marine species in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, southeast of Cape Cod. Among that vast diversity, the team spotted Chilean devil rays (Mobula tarapacana). This ethereal fish is “one of the ocean’s best-kept secrets,” according to the aquarium.
“We rarely see Chilean devil rays on our aerial surveys,” Katherine McKenna, a researcher in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, tells Popular Science. McKenna was one of the observers on the team that saw the Chilean devil rays from above.
The rays were spotted southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Image: New England Aquarium.
“The Monument’s deep sea canyons, complex oceanographic conditions, and productive waters support a remarkable diversity of marine life, especially in the summer months when warm water protruding from the Gulf Stream draws in seasonal visitors like Chilean devil rays,” she says.”
Chilean devil rays, also called sicklefin devil rays, are olive-green- or brown-colored and are found in the planet’s tropics and warm temperature seas. These large fish have an 11- to 12.5-foot-wide wingspan and weigh 715 to 1,100 pounds. They’re named after the country where they were first scientifically documented, and McKenna says that the “devil” was inspired by the horn-shaped cephalic fins around their mouths. They are classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, and mainly threatened by by-catch and overfishing.
These rays are more solitary, but the team still spotted a small fever of them. Image: Image: New England Aquarium.
What’s more, the species is relatively difficult to study. They can travel very far, and they are frequently solitary and usually found offshore. When rays like these are found in a group, however, it’s called a “fever.” One thing we do know is that Chilean devil rays are the deepest diving ray species. They can dive almost 6,000 feet deep.
“This is possible due to a specialized network of blood vessels surrounding their brain that allows them to keep their brain warm even at very cold water temperatures at deep depths,” says McKenna.
Anyone who’s seen the 1986 musical comedy, Little Shop of Horrors, is familiar with Audrey II. Audrey II looks like a towering, blood-eating Venus flytrap plant, even mimicking the jaw-like, snapping pod of real carnivorous plants. But while Venus flytraps consume insects, Audrey II feeds on humans.
On the other hand, plants that trap and digest bugs and, on occasion, small rodents are not only real, but actually quite diverse. Popular Science turned to Coogan to find out why some plants are carnivorous, while others simply soak up their necessary nutrients straight from the soil. We also asked Coogan to dig into all the details behind what makes these plants deadly, at least to birds and other small animals.
What are carnivorous plants?
Carnivorous plants are predatory flowering plants that attract, catch, and absorb animals for their nutrients. They’re both autotrophs, which are organisms that make their own food using light or chemical energy, and heterotrophs. This means that they also have to eat animal prey to survive.
“Carnivorous plants photosynthesize,” says Coogan. “They can use the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar,” he says, for substance. “They’re just getting some extra minerals or nutrients from the bugs or the organisms that they eat.”
In the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors, a giant Venus flytrap-like plant proves deadly. Video: Little Shop of Horrors 4K | Seymour’s TV Interview Goes Horribly Wrong, Warner Bros. Entertainment
Meat-eating plants exist on every continent save Antarctica, and grow in sun-filled places with extremely poor, acidic, and nutrient-free soil. For instance, the bogs, swamps, and marshes of North Carolina and Florida, with their unique combination of sunlight and wetlands, allow these uniquely adapted flora to thrive. This includes Venus flytraps, which are native only to the U.S. Carolinas, and Tracy’s sundew, with its long, thread-like leaves that grow in spirals. It’s often seen blooming alongsidecarnivorous pitcher plants in the Florida Panhandle.
“Carnivory is primarily an adaptation for plants to get nutrients in low nutrient environments,” says Coogan. Carnivorous plants feed on insects to obtain the nitrogen, phosphorus, and other organic nutrients they need to survive, but are unable to absorb from the soil.
This isn’t to say that all plants that grow within poor-soil wetlands are carnivores. Take wiregrass, which is quite prominent in the southeast. “It has really heavy root systems,” says Coogan, which have formed a symbiotic or long-term relationship with mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi attach to the wiregrass roots and help them form nutrients from the region’s poor, sandy soils.
“There’s only a certain number of niches to be filled in an ecosystem, so some plants went one way,” meaning they became carnivores, “and then some plants went the other way.”
How did carnivorous plants evolve?
There are an estimated 800 to 860 species of carnivorous plants worldwide, with new species constantly being discovered. In fact, in the more than 140 million years that flowering plants have been around, carnivory has evolved independently at least a dozen times.
Carnivory is not inherited from a single meat-eating plant ancestor. Instead, carnivorous plants’ highly adapted leaf structures, which include sticky traps, snap traps, and pitfall traps for catching insects, have evolved and diversified more recently, largely between eight and 72 million years ago.
Carnivorous plants are a classic example of convergent evolution. This means that unrelated lineages have all developed similar traits separate from one another to adapt to their sunny, waterlogged, and nutrient-poor environments.
For example, “There are many different kinds of pitcher plants,” carnivorous plants that have hollowed-out pitcher-shaped leaves that act as pitfalls, says Coogan, and they’re completely unrelated. You’ve got low-growing Australian pitcher plants, which are evolutionarily closer to roses, beans, and broccoli, Asian pitcher plants that hang from tropical vines, and upright, trumpet-like North American pitcher plants. Despite their completely different DNA, they’ve all evolved the exact same, tube-shaped “pitfall trap,” says Coogan, to catch and digest insects.
Through convergent evolution, unrelated carnivorous plants like Venus flytraps, sundews, and pitcher plants have also independently repurposed ancient self-defense genes into ingenious digestive tools. While noncarnivorous plants have long used enzymes, called chitinases, to fight off fungal infections, carnivorous plants do the opposite. They use chitinases to break down the tough, chitin-rich exoskeletons of trapped insects. This then allows them to absorb vital nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, transforming what were originally passive, protective enzymes into active weaponry.
Are carnivorous plants harmful to larger organisms?
“I would say ‘no,’’ says Coogan. Almost all carnivorous plants feed exclusively on small insects like flies, mosquitoes, and spiders.
While there are some, like giant pitcher plants, that grow large enough to trap and digest small animals like rats and shrews, “the relationship is more mutualistic,” meaning both species benefit from each other.
This type of pitcher plant are the largest in the world and often consume small mammals. Image: Austin American-Statesman/Hearst Newspapers / Contributor / Getty Images Sara Diggins
Basically giant pitcher plant species produce a sweet, aromatic nectar on the underside of their pitcher lids that attracts small mammals. These mammals “sit on the lid of the pitcher plant to drink the exudate, which is a thick nectar-like substance,” says Coogan.
They’ll often defecate into the plant while feeding, and the giant pitcher absorbs nutrient-rich nitrogen and phosphorus directly from the droppings. It’s a win-win for both parties. “And one of many examples of mutualism in carnivorous plants.” If a small animal accidently falls in, the pitcher plant will then use its acidic digestive enzymes to consume it.
Some incredible carnivorous plants
Coogan’s favorite carnivorous plants run the gamut from small, semi-aquatic Genlisea, commonly known as corkscrew plants, to bladderwort, tiny, bladder-shaped traps that catch small, aquatic creatures and often resemble orchids.
“There are over 200 species of them,” he says, “and they come in three different habitat types. You have fully aquatic bladderwort that are floating in water. You have terrestrial ones that live in kind of soggy soils, and then you also have epiphytic ones that are living in trees and in moss.” They all use ultra-quick, vacuum-driven suction traps to capture prey.
In fact, bladderwort is one of the fastest predatory plants on Earth, and can suck in its prey in less than one millisecond. “The real reason I like them is because they are proliferous, meaning they flower en masse.”
Also popular: butterwarts. “Especially the Mexican butterworts or Pinguicula,” says Coogan. “The reason is that they’re excellent house plants. They look like succulents, but their leaves are sticky and they eat fruit flies and fungus gnats.” They act as a natural form of pest control.
What’s the largest carnivorous plant?
The world’s largest carnivorous plant by trap volume is the giant montane pitcher plant. It’s endemic to Malaysian Borneo and features massive urn-shaped traps that can grow up to 16 inches tall and eight inches wide. While lizards, frogs, and birds do occasionally fall victim to the plant’s digestive enzymes and acids, most wildlife is in the clear.
Humans can also count themselves safe, Audrey II aside.
In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.
As Joanthan the Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) approaches his 195th birthday this December, there is some good news for his fellow tortoises. The previously endangered species is thriving and stable in the Seychelles, according to a study published this week in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
Aldabra giant tortoises are one of the world’s largest land tortoises. They weigh up to 550 pounds and live 150 years. These gentle giants are native to Aldabra Island, one of the Seychelles northeast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. They are also found in the Galápagos, but the population on Aldabra here is much smaller. As the largest animal on Aldabra, they play an ecological role that is similar to elephants. Tortoises are the main consumers of vegetation and will change the habitat while searching for food. They will knock over small trees and shrubs all to get those nutritious leaves. Any seeds not digested will pass through the tortoise’s digestive tract and become food for many other animals.
To check on the population at Aldabra, a team from the University of Exeter in England and the Seychelles Islands Foundation Aldabra analyzed giant tortoise counts collected between 2018 and 2022 on Aldabra Atoll. They found that the population currently stands at approximately 180,000 individuals.
The survey is the first rigorous, atoll-wide estimate of the population and the first update since the late 1990s. At the time, it was believed that about 100,000 tortoises were living on the island.
“More than 180,000 giant tortoises roaming freely on our atoll is proof of what long-term commitment to conservation can achieve,” Frauke Fleischer-Dogley, a study co-author and the CEO of the Seychelles Island Foundation, said in a statement. “This is wonderful news for Seychelles, for the world, and for everyone who has worked to protect Aldabra.”
The team found that the population was relatively stable during the survey period, with a best estimate of almost 183,000 adult and sub-adult tortoises. This number is a far cry from the 19th century. Heavy exploitation and overhunting reduced Aldabra’s tortoises to fewer than 1,000 individuals. Aldabra became a strict nature reserve in 1981 and a UNESCO site in 1982, and these and other conservation measures have helped them rebound.
Giant tortoises grazing in large numbers on Aldabra Atoll. Image: Dennis Hanse.
“Aldabra’s giant tortoise monitoring programme is one of the longest running in the region, but the atoll’s dense vegetation makes counting tortoises genuinely difficult in places,” added study co-author and University of Exeter biologist Nancy Bunbury. “By modelling what we didn’t see, as well as what we did, we’ve produced the most reliable baseline yet for this iconic Seychelles species, establishing a benchmark we can use to track the population for decades to come.”
However, the team cautions that this new figure does not mean that the population has nearly doubled since 1999. The earlier surveys did not account for tortoises present on the atoll, but not seen by surveyors, and were possibly hidden in dense scrub or shade. This new survey took advantage of a more sophisticated statistical technique called Bayesian hierarchical distance sampling. It corrects for both missed animals and for differences in visibility across habitats.
Since these earlier methods likely missed tortoises, the team suggests that previous figures were probably underestimated. At the same time, the population has genuinely grown and now appears healthy and stable.
The study also found that tortoises are at the highest densities in Aldabra’s grasslands, aka “tortoise turf.” They also are often found on open exposed surfaces and in open mixed scrub. The reptiles were harder to detect in dense scrub, mangrove, and habitats covered in a shrubby plant called Pemphis. The new modelling helped correct for reduced visibility from the scrub, Pemphis, and mangrove.
Even with this welcome good news, the team says that vigilance remains essential. Aldabra’s climate is changing, and seeing longer and more frequent droughts. Scientists suspect that these serious dry spells will reduce the shade and food available to tortoises, and rising sea levels threaten low-lying parts of the atoll.
The tortoises are also threatened by invasive mammals. Though feral goats were eradicated in 2012, cats and black rats will still eat tortoise eggs and hatchlings. While there are plans to eradicate the rest of these invasive species, reduced eggs could hinder further population growth.
“These results are great news for the tortoises and testament to the fantastic work done in the field,” added study co-author and University of Exeter, Cornwall statistical ecologist Dave Hudson. “But it’s important to remember that the numbers provide a baseline – not an endpoint. Hopefully we have provided the conservation managers the evidence they need to track future change and act early as the tortoises face increasing pressures from climate change, drought and invasive species.”
Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands are home to an incredible array of wildlife. Amid landscapes of black lava fields, scattered prickly pear cacti, lush highlands, and green mangrove fringes, you’ll spot lumbering land iguanas in striking shades of yellow, orange, and red, comical blue-footed boobies, and some of the pinkest flamingos around. But it turns out that these magnificent creatures aren’t born with their vibrant hues. They actually have to work for them!
To find out why some wildlife changes color according to their diets, and what these various tones and tints mean for survival,Popular Science turned to Jorge Alex Gutierrez Guerrero, an expedition leader on the Galapagos Islands’ Yacht Isabela II. Guerrero says it all comes down to naturally occurring pigments that play a major role in an animal’s immune system. They can even change the color of your skin!
What are carotenoids?
The colorful displays of Galapagos wildlife, including the bright cyan feet of blue-footed boobies and the impressive red throat pouch of magnificent frigatebirds that they inflate during courtship, are a direct result of their diet. Specifically, they result from the digestion of nature’s own punchy dyes known as carotenoids.
“Basically, carotenoids are natural pigments produced by plants, algae, and phytoplankton,” says Gutierrez. These organic chemical compounds play a vital role in nature. They help capture light for photosynthesis, which is how plants use sunlight to make their own food. They act as powerful antioxidants that can protect cells from damage. And they provide the vibrant colors that many animals, birds, and fish need to survive.
For instance, flamingos gradually lose their red pigmentation when their diet lacks carotenoids. According to Gutierrez, this is a perfect example of the “direct relationship between dietary carotenoids and coloration.”
Frigatebird with its inflated bright red pouch on the Genovesa island in the Galapagos. Image: @ Didier Marti / Getty Images Didier Marti
How Galapagos animals get their colors
Wildlife in the Galapagos gets carotenoids primarily through their diets, since these are pigments that they can’t produce naturally. The archipelago’s land iguanas eat cactus flowers and leaves to obtain carotenoids, while blue-footed boobies consume fresh fish like sardines and anchovies to acquire them. Pink flamingos get their fill of carotenoids through algae and brine shrimp.
Once the wildlife digests and metabolizes these natural pigments, the colors of carotenoids, which primarily produce shades of red, orange, and yellow, begin to show in everything from skin and shells to feet and feathers. In many cases, the more brilliant the shades, the healthier the creature. While carotenoids don’t naturally create the color blue, the archipelago’s iconic blue-footed boobies get their turquoise feet from a mix of yellow carotenoid pigments and the collagen structure of their skin.
How other animals get their vibrant hues
Examples of the power of carotenoids even exist in our own backyards.
The sunny yellow coloring of an American goldfinch is a direct result of its carotenoid-rich diet of summer weeds and sunflowers, while northern cardinals get their brilliant red hue through carotenoid-heavy foods such as honeysuckle, hackberries, and seeds.
Why do animals need carotenoids?
Carotenoids aren’t a core nutritional necessity. However, they are an important source of vitamin A, a key component in reproductive health, good vision, and a strong immune system.
While the bulk of birds and animals get carotenoids through their diets, a few rare invertebrates, like spider mites and gall gnats, can create their own carotenoids. They do so through a rare genetic accident, likely caused by a virus or parasite. An ancestor of the spider mite and an ancestor of the gall gnat had close encounters with ancient fungi, causing a horizontal gene transfer. Essentially, horizontal gene transfer is the transmission of DNA between different organisms—and, in this case, species.
Every animal processes these pigments slightly differently. For some animals, carotenoids completely change the color of their features. Others simply absorb carotenoids without changing color at all.
But all animals use carotenoids to fight off disease, such as boosting immune cells to destroy any harmful bacteria. Only healthy wildlife can spare excess carotenoids for bright skin, beaks, or feathers. So the more vibrantly hued birds, reptiles, and fish are, the healthier their immune system. They have enough carotenoids to spare for flashy colors.
For instance, blue-footed boobies with electric, turquoise-blue feet tend to be healthiest. In fact, boobies that go without food for a couple of days can end up with dull-colored feet. When animals get sick, they also lose their hue. First, their bodies divert carotenoids away from exterior features, like skin and feathers, and use them for fighting illness. Second, absorbing nutrients such as carotenoids becomes more difficult. Without carotenoids, an animal’s bright pigments will quickly fade.
Bright colors also come in handy during mating rituals
Carotenoids also play vital roles in mating rituals. When it comes to blue-footed boobies, “It’s very important for a female to find a male with the brightest blue feet, because she is choosing the best provider” for her offspring, says Gutierrez.
It’s a feature that these marine birds show off frequently in their oh-so-quirky mating dance, which includes an elaborate high-step strut. The bluer the feet, the more attractive males appear to their female counterparts.
Male blue-footed boobies do an elaborate mating dance for the ladies to show off their bright blue feet. Maybe there’s a reason Elvis sings about his blue suede shoes? Video: The Blue Footed Boobies Mating Dance | Wild Love, Nat Geo Animals
What’s more, a famous 2006 scientific study on blue-footed boobies showed that females lay smaller eggs for males with duller feet. Basically, a female will put in less reproductive investment if her male isn’t up to par.
Why are animals in the Galapagos so colorful?
“Carotenoids are prominent all over the world,” says Gutierrez. “But they’re especially visible among wildlife in the Galapagos, because it’s a limited environment where the ecosystems are well-marked.” What Gutierrez means is that the archipelago is so geographically isolated and far from the coast of Ecuador, many species—like marine iguanas—have nowhere else to go. Even within the Galapagos, a large percentage of wildlife stick closely to their specific islands.
Another reason the animals here are so colorful? Because an overall lack of predators has allowed the wildlife to evolve without needing dull or camouflage coats to protect them.
Most of the archipelago’s carotenoids come from the ocean, or in the case of land iguanas and yellow-beaked Darwin’s finches, through cactus nectar and pollen.
Further afield, the iconic pink-orange flesh of Pacific Northwest salmon is a direct result of their carotenoid-rich diet—in their case, chowing down on krill and small shrimp. Roseate spoonbills, found across the mangrove swamps, mudflats, and wetlands of the U.S. Gulf Coast, get their rosy pink sheen from dining on crustaceans, crabs, and crayfish.
The best known example comes from consuming carrots. These vegetables are loaded with a red-orange carotenoid called beta-carotene, which our bodies convert into vitamin A.
But when we consume more beta-carotene than we need, the excess pigment starts circulating in our bloodstream and leads to a yellow or orange glow. “It’s mostly visible in your palms,” says Gutierrez.
Still, he says, don’t worry if you have a penchant for sardines and anchovies—the main diet of blue-footed boobies. Since humans process and metabolize these compounds differently, “you’re not going to turn blue, too.”
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She’s bubblegum pink with a permanent little smile. She sports a pretty flower on her head sports a black tattoo on one of her eight arms. But don’t let this dumbo octopus’ adorable exterior fool you. Miss Abyss is here on serious business.
“Miss Abyss is a dumbo octopus from the deep-sea, and she is on a journey all across the country looking for allies to support her to help defend the deep-sea,” Angelo Villagomez, a research fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), tells Popular Science.
While Miss Abyss herself is an octopus illustrated by CAP research associate Jasia Smith, dumbo octopuses (genus Grimpoteuthis) are very real cephalopods. They live on the ocean floor, and many species can be found at extreme depths of 9,800 to 13,000 feet and are only about 8 inches tall.
CAP’s’ Miss Abyss campaign is using the dumbo octopus to raise awareness about protecting public waters from deep-sea mining using the Flat Stanley method. Based on the children’s book Flat Stanley, children are are asked to take pictures of a paper doll in places near where they live for a popular school project. For Miss Abyss, supporters are asked to print out a picture of her and then take a photo or video of her in a place that represents their state or home and share it on social media. Supporters are also encouraged to sign CAP’s petition.
“One of the most popular things in the United States is our public lands and our public waters,” Villagomez says. “We’re creating a fun and engaging way for people of all ages to be creative and basically showcase their support.”
While Miss Abyss attempts to travel to all 50 states, real dumbo octopuses can be found in some of the deepest parts of the ocean. Image: Center for American Progress/Miss Abyss via Instagram.
What is deep-sea mining?
Deep-sea mining is the extraction of mineral resources including manganese, nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements from the ocean floor. Proponents of future deep-sea mining say that these and other minerals could help speed up the development of clean energy technologies. The global demand for nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements needed for digitization and decarbonization may double by 2040 to meet carbon emissions goals. Some also see the deep-sea as a safer alternative to mining on land.
But the process could cause destruction to a critical ecosystem that we still do not know much about. As of April, only 28.7 percent of the global seafloor has been mapped. A 2025 report commissioned by the National Ocean Protection Coalition found that in the next 15 years, the economic, environmental, and technical challenges associated with deep-sea mining would make its profitability or commercial success highly unlikely. Waste discharge from deep-sea mining could also reduce food availability for the species that live there.
On November 12, 2025, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced a Request for Information and Interest (RFI) for leasing land off the Northern Mariana islands for mining. While the comment period ended on January 12, organizations from Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands and their national partners collected over 60,000 petitions, letters, and comments opposing the plans to allow deep sea mining near the Mariana Trench.
On August 17, BOEM announced a Proposed Leasing Notice (PLN) and a 60-day comment period that outlines the terms and conditions of the potential sale. The date for the lease sale is currently set for December 16, 2026.
“Some of the least disturbed coral reef ecosystems on the planet are on these isolated Pacific islands in the U.S. Pacific territories,” says Villagomez. “I think part of the human spirit is knowing that there are places that are unexplored, that there are things on our Earth that are still yet to be discovered.”
“We’re not talking about a small [mine on land] where it’s one open pit,” says Villagomez. “It’s as far as the eye can see in every direction.”
Environmental and indigenous rights
In addition to the environmental risks, deep-sea mining also presents an Indigenous sovereignty issue. The ocean is a sacred part of the identity, spirituality and traditions of the Chamorro and Refaluwasch people of the Marianas, and other communities of American Samoa.
“I am Indigenous Chamorro, born in Guam, but my family is from Saipan. I grew up knowing that I lived next to the Mariana Trench,” Villagomez says. “I remember being out fishing with my dad, and he would then tell dad jokes, like ‘Oh you see the mountain there? It’s the tallest mountain in the world because it stretches all the way down to the Mariana Trench.’”
That was not just a dad joke. At 6.8 miles below sea level, the Mariana Trench is deeper than Mount Everest is tall (5.5 miles).
Mining in the deepest parts of the ocean may not yield minerals companies want. CAP says that the proposed areas in the Marianas do not even have nodule fields of significant commercial value, and alleges that the mining is a pretext for testing prototype equipment for future operations elsewhere.
“This is a really new environmental issue. Up until about a year ago, deep sea mining was science fiction, so the types of people who would be organized on this if it was a public lands issue are not necessarily as organized,” says Villagomez. “So we’re going out there gathering allies, not just pictures of people with Miss Abyss, but also as that collective power to bring to conservation.”
Oh the places she’ll go
Since launching in August, Miss Abyss has already visited about 20 states, gone backstage at a Spin Doctor’s concert, sat beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and visited the Grand Tetons.
Miss Abyss the dumbo octopus in a neighborhood called DUMBO near the Brooklyn Bridge. Image: Center for American Progress/Miss Abyss via Instagram.
While Miss Abyss travels the globe for support, the team at CAP continues working at the policy level. The courts could intervene and stop the lease sales, but the situation remains fluid and uncertain. In the meantime, Miss Abyss will continue her journey on social media.
And as for where Villagomez would like to see Miss Abyss continue to pop up? “I would love for her to visit our national parks.”
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