Harriet the tortoise, RIP

[blobrana]

Harriet the tortoise, the  world's oldest animal in captivity has died on the Sunshine Coast at the ripe old age of 176.
The giant Galapagos tortoise  died of a suspected heart attack. She was a star attraction at Steve "croc" Irwin's Australia Zoo since the 1980s and even features in the Guinness Book of Records for her longevity.

It was originally thought that Harriet was first captured by Charles Darwin in 1835 on the Galápagos Islands. As the tortoises were then dinner plate sized, it is estimated they would have been six years old. However, the story regarding Darwin is most likely apocryphal. Though Darwin caught three tortoises and took them home to Britain aboard the HMS Beagle, genetic tests indicate that Harriet belonged to a sub-species endemic to one of the Galapagos Islands that Darwin never visited.

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[blobrana]

Hum,

"Despite her longevity, Harriet is not the world's oldest known tortoise.



That title was awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records to Tui Malila, a Madagascar radiated tortoise that was presented to the royal family of Tonga by British explorer Captain James Cook in the 1770s. It died in 1965 at the age of 188."

(anther tortoise, called Adwaitya, is believed to be older. That animal was said to have been born around 1750, and died in 2006 at the possible age of 255.)

Source

[blobrana]

Hum,
We may not see the like of them again,
the Bowhead whale, Balaena mysticetus, is  currently listed as endangered species...

 

wikipedia.org/Bowhead_whale