on a sad note...
Jun. 23rd, 2006 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearFor those who hadn't heard, Harriet, a Galapogos tortoise living in a zoo in Australia, died at the age of 176. Though records are incomplete, we're pretty sure it was captured by Mr. Darwin himself during his infamous travels on the Beagle all those years ago when he was formulating the, well, you know...
She was the oldest captured tortoise on record. The oldest wild yet tagged tortoise died just a couple of months ago.
Fortunately, conservation efforts seemed to have managed to work on these ancient, if slow, beasts. Before livestock was imported to the region, tortoises were the main meat supply, and they were nearly hunted to extinction by 1890 when protection laws were put into place (in the aftermath of the realization that they'd "processed" the Great Awk to extinction a few years earlier).
She was the oldest captured tortoise on record. The oldest wild yet tagged tortoise died just a couple of months ago.
Fortunately, conservation efforts seemed to have managed to work on these ancient, if slow, beasts. Before livestock was imported to the region, tortoises were the main meat supply, and they were nearly hunted to extinction by 1890 when protection laws were put into place (in the aftermath of the realization that they'd "processed" the Great Awk to extinction a few years earlier).
