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November 16, 2005
Australia throws party for 175-year old turtle
Australia on Tuesday threw a birthday party for a giant tortoise called Harriet who at 175 years of age is believed to be the world's oldest creature - and to have been brought from the Galapagos Islands by Darwin himself.
At the birthday bash at the Australia Zoo near Brisbane, a cake was cut to celebrate a long and eventful life lived on three continents that keeper Laura Campbell hoped was far from over.
Harriet hasn't far to go before she beats the longevity record of 188 years set by another Galapagos-born tortoise that until his death was the pride and joy of the King of Tonga.
"We're well and truly hoping that Harriet lives a lot longer than that," Campbell said of the much-loved herbivore that munched away on hibiscus flowers.
Harriet goes back so far - before the motorcar, or even commercial steam trains, before the first slavery ban and before the industrial revolution got properly underway - that her early years are a bit sketchy.
She is believed to have been five years old when English naturalist Charles Darwin visited South America's Galapagos Islands in 1835 and picked her up and took her back with him aboard HMS Beagle.
Darwin took three tortoises - Tom, Dick and Harry - unaware the trio were not all males. It wasn't until the 1950s, after living for more than a century as a male, that Harriet got her new name to accord with her newly discovered femininity.
Civil servant John Wickham brought the Galapagos exhibits with him from London when he came out to the colony in the 1850s to take charge of municipal affairs in what was then the small Queensland township of Brisbane.
Some dispute Harriet's story. But DNA testing vouches for her venerable age and her birth in the Galapagos.
Posted by sue at November 16, 2005 09:14 AM
Comments
Weekly Reader had the amazing critter in it.
Posted by: Rachel Maron at January 25, 2006 08:12 PM