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Happy Birthday, Harriet

By stcynic on October 11, 2005.

Charles Darwin's Galapagos tortoise, Harriet, is turning 175 and Australia is throwing a party for her. This really is one of the most fascinating stories to me. When Darwin was aboard the Beagle as a naturalist in 1835, doing the study that formed the basis for his later theorizing on evolution, he brought back three tortoises from the Galapagos islands. He named them Tom, Dick and Harry. Dick died in the 1880s sometime, while Tom lived until 1949. In 1960, a visiting zoo director examined the last remaining tortoise and realized that it was female, prompting the name change from Harry to Harriet. Well now Harriet is turning 175 years old, quite possibly the world's oldest living creature. Harriet now lives at a zoo run by Steve Irwin in Australia and on November 15th, they're throwing a birthday party for the old girl. That's a lot of candles on the cake.

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She's a beauty!

And she doesn't look a day over 150.

Surely you mean oldest animal. There are centuries (and in some cases, millenia) old trees around, after all.

By Tanooki Joe (not verified) on 11 Oct 2005 #permalink

Joe-

I think the term "creature" in the OP covers that.

Fascinating. Never heard of that.

And now we have a protagonist for the Disney animated version of Voyage of the Beagle.