on a sad note...

[acroyear]

For 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).

Comments

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Aww! The kiddle will be sad to hear that. She lived at Australia Zoo, in Queensland, and was apparently one of Bindi Irwin's favorites. Mine being almost the exact same age as that little one has followed what she's been up to a bit... after all, they both like animals. And yeah, I've heard before that she was one of Darwin's finds... but after that many years it *is* tought to keep track I'd guess.