Harriet (turtle)
Harriet (* approx. 1830 on the Galápagos Islands , Ecuador ; † June 23, 2006 in the Australia Zoo , Queensland , Australia ) - until 1960 Harry - was a giant Galápagos tortoise weighing approx. 180 kg . It belonged to the subspecies Chelonoidis nigra porteri and was about 175 years old.
Since the 1990s, the story of the Australia Zoo, where the turtle last lived, has been spread that Harriet was one of the turtles captured by Charles Darwin in the Galápagos Islands in 1835 and brought to England . In 1841 she is said to have been moved to the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens in Brisbane and lived there until the botanical gardens were closed in 1952. She was then brought to a nature reserve on Australia's Sunshine Coast in the luggage of a British official. A zoo director from Hawaii is said to have found out only in 1960 that Harriet was a female.
However, the collection of this turtle by Charles Darwin seems extremely unlikely, since Harriet could be clearly identified as Chelonoidis nigra porteri on the basis of the mitochondrial DNA . This subspecies can only be found on Santa Cruz - an island in the Galápagos Archipelago that Darwin never set foot on. The old age of the turtle, which according to the scientific investigation must have hatched before 1850, was confirmed.
Harriet died of heart failure on June 23, 2006 .
literature
- Wüthrich Fritz: The story of the Galápagos giant tortoise Harriet. In: Testudo (SIGS). 15, No. 4, 2006 ( sigs.ch PDF; 776 kB).
- Freiburg Friederike, Grigat Guido: In slow motion through world history. In: Der Spiegel. November 15, 2005 ( spiegel.de ).
- Freiburg Friederike, Grigat Guido: The turtle grandpa and the French revolution. In: Der Spiegel. March 23, 2006 ( spiegel.de ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ 176 years on the armor: Harriet the turtle is dead. Spiegel Online, June 23, 2006, accessed on December 9, 2015 .