On the remote island of Golem Grad in North Macedonia, a population of Hermann’s tortoises is facing a bizarre and violent path to extinction. New research reveals that an extreme gender imbalance is causing male tortoises to harass females to the point of death.
A Deadly Gender Imbalance
Ecologists, including Dragan Arsovski, have discovered that males on the island outnumber females by a staggering 19 to 1. This disparity has turned the island into a dangerous environment for the few remaining females.
The investigation found:
- Relentless Pursuit: Males form “copulatory trains,” where dozens of males chase and “bury” a single female.
- Physical Injury: Courtship involves biting, ramming, and poking with sharp tail tips. Researchers found that 75% of females on the island suffered from genital injuries.
- Low Birth Rates: Due to extreme stress, only 15% of island females were found to be carrying eggs, compared to 100% on the mainland.
Walking Off Cliffs
The most shocking discovery is that female tortoises are choosing to walk off the island’s sheer cliffs to escape the constant male attention.
In controlled experiments, researchers found that while mainland tortoises avoided ledges, the island females—exhausted by male “arousal”—voluntarily walked off the edge. Dragan Arsovski even tracked a rare pregnant female via GPS, only to find her dead on the beach with a smashed shell after she fell from a cliff.
The “Extinction Vortex”
Scientists predict that the last female tortoise on Golem Grad will die by 2083. While it remains a mystery how the population became so imbalanced—some suggest humans may have brought an unequal number of tortoises to the island decades ago—the result is a “death spiral.”
Without enough females to reproduce, and with those that remain dying young from stress and falls, the population is expected to vanish entirely within the next few decades.
Source: The New York Times (Feb. 14, 2026)
