Sexual aggression drives female tortoises to suicide

[mainer]

Such a disturbing article. Sexual aggression in the animal kingdom drives females to suicide. Humans aren't unique.

This uninhabited island in a country that once was part of Yugoslavia is crawling with around 1,000 Hermann’s tortoises — especially males. They pursue mates aggressively, making life unhealthy and short for the island’s scarce females. Some of those females even die by walking off the island’s 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.

(snip)

But for some reason, there were far more adult males than females — 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.
Then, 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. “She’s literally buried by males,” Dr. Arsovski said.

He and his co-authors wrote that as part of the tortoises’ courtship, they “bump, bite (sometimes to the point of blood loss), mount and finally vigorously poke fleeing females” with a sharp tail tip. Three-quarters of the island’s females had genital injuries.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/science/tortoises-island-sex-cliff.html?searchResultPosition=1

[yardwork]

1. This sounds like a stressed population.

It sounds like there's an overpopulation of tortoises on this barren island, with scarce resources.

[mainer]

2. On this island, the only scarce resource is females

And scarce resources, in and of itself, wouldn't necessarily lead to mass sexual assault.

[Goonch]

3. ;-{)......

https://vp.nyt.com/video/2026/02/13/161663_1_14HS-tb-tortoises-76084_wg_av1_1080p.mp4

[kimbutgar]

4. I was recently visiting a pond and saw these turtles

I took another picture of three turtles on top of one another also. I wonder ?

[mainer]

5. The study abstract sums it up:

In an exceptionally dense island population of Hermann's tortoises in Lake Prespa in North Macedonia, sexually coercive males dramatically overnumber females, inflict severe copulatory injuries and put them at risk of fatal falls from the island plateau's sheer rock faces. Harassed females are emaciated, reproduce less frequently, produce smaller clutches and have lower annual survival rates compared to females from a neighbouring mainland population. Sixteen years of capture-recapture data reveal an ongoing extinction event and predict that the last island female will die in 2083. Paradoxically, while high population density might suggest prosperity, it can trigger population collapse under highly skewed adult sex ratio in a coercive mating system.

The males are harassing the females into extinction on this island.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.70296

[milestogo]

6. Every Species, including humans.

Humans have so many more ways to subjugate women than turtles do.

[NickB79]

7. Sounds like it's time for some turtle soup

To give the population a reset.

[mainer]

8. But only boy-turtle soup

The poor girls need a rest. Or a nunnery.

[chowder66]

9. I don't have a subscription. Is there anything being done about this?

[mainer]

10. this link should work for full article

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/science/tortoises-island-sex-cliff.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MVA.Vlce.gL1FpRJYQhvu&smid=url-share

[chowder66]

11. Thank you!