Giant tortoise

Mm.

So someone went counting tortoises, giant tortoises in Se- Seychelles.

When did they stop?

[laughs] Yeah.

Uh, they've just, uh, there was a lot of research going around and, uh, it has been hidden, but it's come to light now.

I guess they're trying to protect them.

But Stephen, there are 180,000 giant tortoises of this-

Sh-

And moving across this grassland, in numbers that are difficult to comprehend until you see them, are tortoises.

Aldabra is home to roughly one hundred thousand Aldabra giant tortoises.

Aldabrachelys gigantea, the largest population of giant tortoises anywhere on Earth.

One hundred thousand.

The number is so large that it requires a moment of recalibration, because the word tortoise, for most people, evokes a single animal, a pet in a garden, a specimen in a zoo, a solitary creature moving slowly across a small enclosure.

The tortoises are the dominant herbivores on the atoll, and their dominance has shaped the ecosystem into a form that would not exist without them.

The grasslands of Aldabra are maintained by tortoise grazing.

The grass is kept short, cropped close to the ground by the constant feeding of thousands of animals, creating a sward that ecologists have termed tortoise turf, a distinctive vegetation type that exists only where giant tortoises are present in sufficient numbers to maintain it.