San Diego’s “Queen of the Zoo” has died. Her name was Gramma, and she was a Galápagos tortoise whose 141 years of existence (give or take) included 20 presidents, two world wars and a pair of pandemics.
But to her caretakers at the San Diego Zoo, where she died Thursday after nearly a century in residence, Gramma was “a sweet and shy tortoise” who enjoyed romaine lettuce and cactus fruit.
“She quietly touched the lives of countless people over nearly a century in San Diego as an incredible ambassador for reptile conservation worldwide,” the zoo said.
She was an inadvertent witness to periods of rapid change. Cars, computers, the internet and artificial intelligence all emerged during Gramma’s life. Twelve states joined the United States during her lifetime. Born in the final days of Chester A. Arthur’s presidency, she turned 60 in the midst of World War II.
But according to tortoise experts, Gramma probably spent the first two to three years after her Nov. 15, 1884, hatching quietly — living under a rock in Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands.
There she would have hidden from hawks and other predators while her shell formed, said James Gibbs, vice president of science and conservation for the Galápagos Conservancy, a nonprofit that protects and works to revitalize the tropical archipelago.
Roughly 350,000 giant tortoises like Gramma roamed the Galápagos Islands before the 1800s, when whalers arrived and began relying on tortoise meat and oil, Gibbs said.
The effects were devastating.
Three of the 15 subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise are now extinct, and the remainder are considered vulnerable or endangered, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
In the 1920s and 1930s, conservationists such as the New York Aquarium’s first director, Charles Haskins Townsend, went to the Galápagos to save the species.
It was during a Townsend expedition in either 1928 or 1931 — recordkeeping was poor, Gibbs said — that Gramma was captured and brought back to the Bronx.
Hoping to establish insurance colonies across the country to rebuild the population, Townsend sent tortoises to zoos across the country. He sent eight to San Diego. One was Gramma.
According to the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, which keeps a database of zoo animals, Gramma arrived in San Diego in 1930.
“She would have been little,” said Joe Flanagan, chief veterinarian at the Houston Zoo. At the time, Gramma was only a third of the way into her life.
But it took a few more decades before conservationists learned how to breed the rare tortoises.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, conservationists launched a captive breeding program in an attempt to save the species. At the time, he said, there were fewer than 6,000 of the tortoises worldwide.
Some were repatriated back to the Galápagos. The most famous was a fellow San Diego Zoo denizen named, appropriately, Diego. He sired upward of 800 children before retiring in 2020.
There are now 30,000 of the giant tortoises worldwide, Gibbs said — with a third of them attributable to the captive breeding program.
“That is really one of the most successful species reintroductions of all time,” Flanagan said.
With her species saved from possible extinction, Gramma lived life as a local celebrity in San Diego. Children used to write poems about the zoo’s tortoises and ride them.
In 2010, the Los Angeles Times wrote about a million-dollar upgrade to the San Diego Zoo’s Reptile Mesa aimed at making the enclosures more comfortable for the animals.
The article describes many of the giant residents. One is stubborn, another is aggressive. Gramma is also described: “As for connubial activity, Gramma (No. 4), thought to be between 120 and 130 years old, is the most accommodating of the females.”
Making it to 141 years shows she was loved well, Gibbs said. In the wild, he said, every 10,000th giant tortoise lives to 200 years old.
In captivity, the tortoises don’t have to worry about predators and eat a wider variety of foods. That’s because what they would eat in the wild — grass — can’t be bought at the grocery store.
“They’re essentially a horse with a shell,” Flanagan said. “They eat grass and leafy greens.”
Lettuces, kale, collards, mustard greens, spinach, endive, dandelion greens and cabbage are all on the menu — which to a tortoise, is decadent, Flanagan said. “That’s like trying to survive on candy if you’re a human being,” he added, noting that the reptiles go crazy for papaya.
But even the cushy confines of captivity can’t stop the ravages of time.
As is common for animals of her size and age, Gramma had developed an “ongoing bone conditions related to advanced age,” according to the San Diego Zoo. They became severe enough that her caretakers decided to euthanize her.
Gramma is remembered as a thread that has connected generations of employees, guests and conservationists, the zoo said. She went from appearing in black-and-white photos to being a social media maven.
“It was a privilege to care for such a remarkable tortoise,” the zoo wrote.
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