Lonesome George, the famous and last-surviving giant Geochelone abigdoni tortoise from the island of Pinta in the Galapagos, has achieved that fame in part for his coy attitude to the ladies. Having failed to produce any offspring despite being wooed by many female tortoises, the worst was feared for George’s species.

But now, news arrives from the Galapagos that one of the two female tortoises sharing George’s compound at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the central island of Santa Cruz, has laid five eggs. And the world’s media is rejoicing (BBC, msnbc, AP, Reuters).

We won’t know for a while, though, whether the eggs will bring us little bundles of tortoisey joy. November is the guess for when they might hatch. We had this same excitement last year when eggs were found, thought to have been fertilized by George, but they were duds (see here and here). Still, George has waited around 100 years so far, I’m sure the last 5 months of waiting won’t add to his burden too much.

Well done George!

Image: From Flickr by putneymark under Creative Commons