Conservationists have released 155 giant tortoises on an island in the Galapagos to help replace a similar species that died out 150 years ago, officials aid Thursday.

The young tortoises, of the breed Chelonoidis hoodensis, were set free on Santa Fe island, the Galapagos National Park service announced.

The tortoises, each aged around 10-12 years old, were raised at the Fausto Llerena breeding center and are part of a program to repopulate the island at the center of the Pacific archipelago.

Also known as the Espanola Giant Tortoise, the newly freed reptiles are a similar species to the Chelonoidis spp, which are today extinct.

They originally come from Espanola Island, also known as Hood Island, in the far southeast of the Galapagos chain.

"The tortoises that have been released carry a microchip under their skin with a permanent number attached to make it easier to track them," said Jorge Carrion, the head of the Galapagos National Park.

The newly released tortoises join 394 others which were set free on the 9.5 square mile (24.7 square kilometer) island.

The program, run by the national park service and the NGO Galapagos Conservancy, is due to run until 2026.

The giant tortoises are "engineers of the ecosystem" because they help spread vegetation in their natural habitat, said Carrion.

The first of the creatures was released on to the island in 2015, said Washington Tapia, in charge of Galapagos Conservancy's giant turtle project.

The animals are "between 10 and 12 years old and should start to reproduce in the next five to seven years," he said.

Located some 600 miles off the coast of South America, the islands belong to Ecuador and are classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The islands are best known for their unique flora and fauna, which inspired naturalist Charles Darwin to write his landmark 1859 study on evolution, "The Origin of Species."

Giant tortoises are believed to have arrived on the remote volcanic island chain about three to four million years ago, borne by ocean currents. With no natural predators, they spread across the islands and split into different species.

However, in the 19th century their population was devastated by sailors who used them as storable fresh meat on long ocean voyages, and by invasive rats, cats and ants which ate their eggs.

Last week, conservationists announced they had discovered a giant tortoise from a species thought to have become extinct more than a century ago.

Video, photos show rare Amazonian spiders eating frogs, lizards
Washington (UPI) Feb 28, 2019 - Biologists have documented 15 new predator-prey interactions between deadly Amazonian arthropods and a variety of vertebrates, including a plate-sized tarantula dragging a baby opossum across the rainforest floor.

Researchers from the University of Michigan observed spiders, centipedes and water bugs catching and eating frogs, tadpoles, lizards and snakes. Scientists described the novel predator-prey interactions this week in the in the journal Amphibian and Reptile Conservation.

"This is an underappreciated source of mortality among vertebrates," Daniel Rabosky, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biologist at Michigan, said in a news release. "A surprising amount of death of small vertebrates in the Amazon is likely due to arthropods such as big spiders and centipedes."

Rabosky and his research partners observed large spiders and centipedes eating unusual dinners over the course of several years during field work among the lowland Amazon rainforest at the base of the Andes.

"We kept recording these events, and at some point we realized that we had enough observations to put them together in a paper," Rabosky said.

Of all the grisly encounters witnessed by researchers, a mygalomorph spider feeding on an opossum was undoubtedly the most exciting -- and something scientists had never observed before.

"We were pretty ecstatic and shocked, and we couldn't really believe what we were seeing," said Michael Grundler, Michigan PhD student. "We knew we were witnessing something pretty special, but we weren't aware that it was the first observation until after the fact."

Scientists also observed a large centipede eating a coral snake that it decapitated.

"Coral snakes are very dangerous and can kill humans," said Joanna Larson, a doctoral candidate at Michigan. "To see one taken down by an arthropod was very surprising. Those centipedes are terrifying animals, actually."

It's near impossible to do justice to the complexity of Amazonian food webs. There are too many hungry predators and a plethora of feeding opportunities.

"Where we do this research there are about 85 species of amphibians -- mostly frogs and toads -- and about 90 species of reptiles," said Rudolf von May, a postdoctoral researcher in Rabosky's lab. "And considering that there are hundreds of invertebrates that potentially prey upon vertebrates, the number of possible interactions between species is huge, and we are highlighting that fact in this paper."

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Smugglers arrested in Malaysia with over 3,000 rare turtles
Kuala Lumpur (AFP) Feb 27, 2019
Smugglers were arrested in Malaysia on Wednesday with some 3,300 endangered turtles aboard their boat, officials said, as the country battles to clamp down on the burgeoning illicit wildlife trade. Malaysia has in recent years developed a reputation as a transit point for trafficked animals. This haul comes two weeks after authorities seized a record 30 tonnes of pangolins and their scales. The two unidentified smugglers were stopped by the coastguard just after midnight off the southern state ... read more