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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/02\/14\/science\/tortoises-island-sex-cliff.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20260217&instance_id=171200&nl=the-morning&regi_id=122976029&segment_id=215386&user_id=b25c5730c89e0c73f75709d8f1254337",
    "parsed_content": "A female Hermann\u2019s tortoise from the island of Golem Grad in North Macedonia, with an injury from a fall on her carapace.Credit...Dragan ArsovskiSkip to contentSkip to site indexSearch & Section NavigationSection NavigationAccountAccountTrilobitesConstant Sexual Aggression Drives Female Tortoises to Walk Off CliffsOn a remote island in North Macedonia, male Hermann\u2019s tortoises outnumber females 19 to 1, an imbalance driving the population to extinction.A female Hermann\u2019s tortoise from the island of Golem Grad in North Macedonia, with an injury from a fall on her carapace.Credit...Dragan ArsovskiSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTListen to this article \u00b7 5:09 min Learn moreShare full articleBy Elizabeth PrestonElizabeth Preston has reported on female frogs that play dead to avoid males and how some cockroaches seal their bond with cannibalism.Feb. 14, 2026On the island of Golem Grad in North Macedonia, visitors may see a chain of tortoises mounting each other like a slow-moving, libidinous locomotive. It used to strike Dragan Arsovski, an ecologist at the Macedonian Ecological Society, as funny. Now that he knows what\u2019s really going on, he isn\u2019t laughing.This uninhabited island in a country that once was part of Yugoslavia is crawling with around 1,000 Hermann\u2019s tortoises \u2014 especially males. They pursue mates aggressively, making life unhealthy and short for the island\u2019s scarce females. Some of those females even die by walking off the island\u2019s cliffs. In a paper published last month in the journal Ecology Letters, researchers have found that the relentless males are driving their population to extinction.The island, in Lake Prespa, has a forested plateau encircled by sheer cliffs. When Dr. Arsovski started studying the salad-plate-size tortoises in 2008, \u201cit was quite a dense and seemingly prosperous population,\u201d he said.But for some reason, there were far more adult males than females \u2014 19 males for every female on the plateau, at the latest count. He and his colleagues documented how the males seemed to manage their carnal instincts by mounting each other.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThen, after many years of study, Dr. Arsovski realized that the females were undersized and dying young. He also realized those once-comical copulatory trains were made up of many males pursuing just one female. When the female tired, the train would become a frenzied heap of reptiles. \u201cShe\u2019s literally buried by males,\u201d Dr. Arsovski said.He and his co-authors wrote that as part of the tortoises\u2019 courtship, they \u201cbump, bite (sometimes to the point of blood loss), mount and finally vigorously poke fleeing females\u201d with a sharp tail tip. Three-quarters of the island\u2019s females had genital injuries.VideoIn an experiment, researchers simulated what happened when female tortoises tried to evade the males, creating an enclosure with an opening at the end and adding five aroused males, who pursued the females to the open edge.CreditCredit...Dragan ArsovskiImageA cliff face on Golem Grad.Credit...Dragan ArsovskiNonstop male attention seemed to be driving females to early deaths. The scientists wondered whether the stress also keeps females from reproducing; they can store sperm for several years rather than fertilizing their eggs. The researchers began transporting female tortoises to a veterinarian\u2019s office for X-rays.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe scans revealed that most island females\u2019 bellies were empty. Only 15 percent of females from the plateau carried any eggs. But among tortoises from a nearby mainland population, every female was pregnant, her belly packed with up to 11 eggs.One more hint about the bleak lives of the Golem Grad females was that on multiple occasions, scientists saw them throw themselves off the cliffs.Earlier experiments had shown that the island\u2019s tortoises are bold navigators of their rugged native terrain and fearlessly climb off ledges. So Dr. Arsovski set up an experiment in the field: He put females in a temporary enclosure with one exit that led to a short, cushioned fall.Female tortoises from the mainland, if they were alone, never took the exit. By contrast, many of the island females eventually walked off the simulated cliff. When scientists added five aroused males to the enclosure, though, nearly all the females ended up falling. The authors noted that while the mainland females were pushed, many of the island females \u201cexited voluntarily.\u201dImageGroup mating behavior of Hermann\u2019s tortoises in North Macedonia.Credit...Dragan ArsovskiMale turtles, too, sometimes go over the island\u2019s edge. But, Dr. Arsovski said, \u201cthere\u2019s a very significantly higher proportion of females that do die like this.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTOnce, he put a GPS device on one of the island\u2019s few egg-carrying females to track where she laid them. Instead, data from the device\u2019s accelerometer \u201cjust went berserk\u201d one day, he said. When he returned to the island, he found her dead on the beach, her shell smashed.The scientists predict in the new study that Golem Grad\u2019s last female tortoise will die in 2083.The high concentration of aggressive males \u201cactually seems to be causing an extinction vortex,\u201d said Jeanine Refsnider, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Toledo in Ohio who was not involved in the study.Dr. Refsnider had \u201cnever heard of anything like that\u201d in a natural setting without human disturbances such as pollution or habitat loss, she said, adding, \u201cIt\u2019s really unusual and disturbing, but it\u2019s really fascinating.\u201dSomething must have initially tipped this population into having too many males. The scientists say it could have been random variation. On the mainland, there are slightly more females than males.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIt\u2019s also possible that humans carried the tortoises to the island in the first place, maybe in unequal numbers. The tortoises can live for a century if conditions are right, and, mysteriously, more than a hundred of Golem Grad\u2019s oldest males have numbers carved into their shells.\u201cWe have no idea where they come from,\u201d Dr. Arsovski said. \u201cI\u2019ve talked to so many people in this region \u2014 the oldest people I could find.\u201dNo one knows the answer except the tortoises. In a matter of decades, they may disappear and take their secrets with them.Elizabeth Preston is the author of \u201cThe Creatures\u2019 Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care,\u201d publishing on May 5.Share full articleRelated ContentAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
    "ai_headline": "Constant Sexual Aggression Drives Female Tortoises to Walk Off Cliffs",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Tortoises Walk Off Cliffs Due to Male Aggression North Macedonia",
    "ai_excerpt": "On a North Macedonian island, male Hermann's tortoises aggressively pursue females, leading to injuries and even death by falling off cliffs. Researchers found that the imbalance of males to females is driving the population towards extinction. Experiments show females are driven to the edge by relentless male attention.",
    "ai_subject_tags": [
        "Animal Behavior",
        "Tortoises",
        "Extinction",
        "Ecology",
        "North Macedonia",
        "Sexual Aggression",
        "Conservation",
        "Research"
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