Get ready for your Thursday morning squeeeee: After making history as the first Galápagos tortoise in Zurich in 1946, Nigrita has now gifted one Swiss zoo nine new baby tortoises. Herself born in the 1930s, Nigrita laid the eggs last fall, and her latest batch of hatchlings will join their brothers and sisters at zoos around the world. As the only institution in Europe to have successfully bred Galapagos tortoises in captivity, the Zurich Zoo houses 19 young turtles from a few days old to eight years, alongside 80-year-old Nigrita and the father of her baby tortoises, Jumbo (who weighs a measly 440 pounds).
Galápagos tortoises can live for up to 150 years, and, at 80, Nigrita is in her egg-laying prime. Each time she lays eggs, zookeepers dig them up and put them in a temperature-controlled incubator, to ensure healthy growth. Since she started producing hatchlings, Nigrita has laid around 300 eggs and hatched 91 babies.
*This article has been updated.
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