For more than nine decades, generations of visitors walked past the same giant tortoise at the Philadelphia Zoo.
Children who first saw her in the 1930s grew up, had children of their own, and eventually became grandparents. The world outside her enclosure transformed almost beyond recognition. Cities changed. Technology advanced. Wars began and ended. Human lifetimes came and went.
And through all of it, Mommy remained.
The Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoise arrived at Philadelphia Zoo on April 23, 1932. Zoo records say she weighed about 40 pounds when she was presented to the institution by Milton W. Holden after an expedition to the Galápagos Islands. Today, she is estimated to be nearly 100 years old and is one of the zoo’s oldest residents.
For decades, however, one chapter of her extraordinarily long life remained unwritten.
She had never successfully produced offspring.
Then, more than 90 years after arriving in Philadelphia, that changed dramatically.
Mommy became a first-time mother.
Not to one baby.
Not even to two or three.
By the end of the remarkable breeding effort, she and another nearly century-old Galápagos tortoise named Abrazzo had produced 16 healthy hatchlings.
The achievement was extraordinary because of Mommy’s age, but it was far more than a heartwarming zoo story. Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoises are critically endangered, and Mommy had previously contributed no descendants to the managed population in American zoos. Her offspring therefore represented an important new genetic line in conservation efforts aimed at safeguarding these giant reptiles.
Philadelphia Zoo described Mommy as the oldest first-time mother known for her species in a U.S. zoo. Associated Press coverage of the births likewise highlighted the extraordinary age of both parents and the conservation significance of the hatchlings.
Nearly a century after her own life began, Mommy had suddenly become part of the species’ future.
A Tortoise Who Has Watched History Pass
It is difficult to comprehend how long Mommy has lived at the Philadelphia Zoo.
When she arrived in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt had not yet become president of the United States.
Commercial television had not become part of everyday American life.
The first modern computers were still years away.
No human being had traveled into space.
Philadelphia Zoo itself had already been operating for decades—it opened in 1874 and is recognized as the first zoo in the United States—but Mommy would go on to become one of its most enduring living connections to the past.
Zoo records show that she arrived on April 23, 1932, after being brought from the Galápagos region. The Philadelphia Zoo’s historical timeline states that she has remained there ever since.
By April 2025, the date on which her first offspring were introduced publicly also marked the 93rd anniversary of her arrival.
In April 2026, she passed 94 years at the same institution.
That kind of longevity sounds almost impossible by human standards, but giant tortoises operate on a very different biological timetable.
Philadelphia Zoo notes that Galápagos tortoises can live for roughly 100 to 200 years. Males can grow to around 500 pounds, while females average about 250 pounds. They are among the largest living tortoises on Earth.
So while Mommy is exceptionally old, being nearly 100 does not necessarily mean she is at the absolute limit of her species’ lifespan.
What made her story exceptional was what happened at this advanced age.
She became reproductively successful for the first time.
The Arrival of Abrazzo
Mommy’s transformation from longtime zoo resident to first-time mother was not an accident.
It was the result of years of carefully planned conservation work.
The male tortoise Abrazzo arrived at Philadelphia Zoo in 2020 from Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in South Carolina following a breeding recommendation made through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan.
Species Survival Plans, often called SSPs, coordinate breeding among accredited institutions with the goal of maintaining healthy, genetically diverse populations of threatened and endangered animals.
In Mommy’s case, genetic diversity was particularly important.
Philadelphia Zoo said that before she produced offspring, her genes were not represented in the managed AZA population. Zoo experts considered her one of the most genetically valuable Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoises in the program.
That meant a successful pairing could contribute something genuinely new.
But breeding two giant tortoises is not as simple as placing them together and waiting.
Zoo staff spent years preparing.
In 2021, donations helped purchase specialized nesting material—substrate consisting of materials such as sand and soil—to give Mommy suitable conditions for laying eggs.
In 2022, staff introduced Mommy and Abrazzo and carefully studied the male’s behavior.
By 2023, Mommy had begun laying clutches of eggs.
At first, nothing happened.
Three early clutches did not produce viable offspring.
For the keepers who had invested years of planning and observation, those unsuccessful attempts could easily have been discouraging.
But giant tortoise conservation is a field measured in years and decades rather than days.
They continued.