Aldabra

Assorted info:

• It's an atoll consisting of several islands, in the Indian Ocean off Africa. Here's a map.
• It's in the Seychelles, though it's geologically distinct from most of the other islands.
• It has 150,000 giant tortoises. Here's one ambling over the distinctive terrain. Here are many hiding from the noonday sun. Here are some swimming.
• Here's a description of Aldabra.
• It's been the subject of various research programmes since the mid 1960s, at which stage it was British and the government wanted to build an airfield on it. The Royal Society sent an expedition there which discovered the giant tortoises, no longer found elsewhere in that hemisphere. (The Galapagos giant tortoise is different, anyway.) It was saved; the airfield went to Diego Garcia. Here's the Smithsonian research program.

Aldabra aldabra@chiark.greenend.org.uk

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