Slow and Steady Saves the Race

Diego, a male Chelonoidis hoodensi who's probably more than 100 years old, will get to go back to his native island in March.

The giant Galapagos tortoise has been living in a breeding center on an island called Santa Cruz in the Galapagos chain. He was found at the San Diego Zoo and brought there in 1976 because only two males and 12 females of his kind remained in the wild, and biologists and animal preservation scientists wanted to try to save the species. No one knows exactly when he was brought to the zoo, but it was sometime in the first half of the 20th century.

Since then, Diego has fathered more than 800 of his kind, who are raised for a short time at the center and then turned loose back on their native island of Espanola. Six years ago, a genetic study of the giant Galapagos population on Espanola showed that he was the father of more than 40% of the turtles on the island.

When Diego was shown footage of The Girls Next Door, the reality show in which the late Hugh Hefner, then in his 80s, displayed his machismo by appearing with his three girlfriends, he reportedly became the first turtle to laugh so hard he rolled onto his back.