Aldabra Giant Tortoise

The Aldabra giant tortoise, Aldabrachelys gigantea, is one of the largest tortoises in the world, a species of the family Testudinidae endemic to the Seychelles and most closely associated with Aldabra Atoll, home to roughly 100,000 individuals, the world's largest population of the species, with additional populations on other Seychellois islands and an isolated group near Zanzibar. It has a brown or tan, high-domed carapace, males averaging about 250 kilograms and 122 centimeters in shell length, females smaller at around 159 kilograms and 91 centimeters, and an unusually long neck even for its size that lets it browse vegetation up to a meter above the ground. It inhabits grasslands, scrub, mangrove swamps and coastal dunes, is classified as Vulnerable, and is remarkably long-lived, with some individuals exceeding 200 years, having survived extinction pressures that eliminated other Indian Ocean giant tortoise populations by 1840.