King Faruq's tortoise

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King Faruq's tortoise was a Galápagos giant tortoise ( Geochelone elephantopus ) that belonged to Faruq I , the penultimate king of Egypt , and died in the Giza zoo . During her lifetime she was considered to be the "oldest turtle in the world", but this is controversial as there are different information about her date of birth and death.

history

In 1952 the Egyptian King Faruq abdicated and went into exile in Rome . In one of his palace gardens he had a private zoo that he had to leave behind. The giant tortoise Samir , which was taken over from the zoo in Giza , also lived in this private zoo. According to other sources, Faruq left the turtle to the zoo as early as 1936, and other reports say that the animal came to the zoo as early as 1890 as a gift from the Khedive Muhammad Tawfiq , who opened the zoo at the time.

On April 7, 2006, the international press reported, according to the zoo management, that Samir, the oldest turtle in the world, had died of old age at the age of 270 . In April 2013, the death of King Faruq's tortoise was reported again at the Cairo Zoo. According to the British newspaper Independent, this was a false report: the animal had only turned 80 and died 15 years earlier, i.e. in 1998. In an interview with the British newspaper, the zoo director Alaa Abdoon said that he believed that the recent hoax of Samir's alleged death served to link the end of the hapless presidency of Mohammed Morsi with the death of the animal popular in Egypt. In April 2015, it was reported again, this time by the CNN's Arab service , that the turtle had now died at the age of 270 as the second oldest turtle in the world.

On March 22, 2006, the Aldabra giant tortoise named Adwaita died in Calcutta Zoo , allegedly at the age of 256 the oldest tortoise living in captivity at the time. In 2015, the 183-year-old Seychelles giant tortoise Jonathan on the British island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic was considered to be the oldest living turtle .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ LIFE. from Nov. 24, 1952, ISSN 0024-3019 , Volume 33, No. 21, p. 89 ( limited preview in Google book search).  
  2. ^ Royal turtle: World's second oldest animal dies in Cairo at age 280 - islam.ru. In: islam.ru. Retrieved July 19, 2015 .
  3. ^ A b Royal turtle: World's second-oldest animal dies in Cairo at age 270 , al-Arabiya , April 26, 2013
  4. ↑ Welcome to the Official Egypt Zoo Website. In: Egypt Zoo. February 19, 2006, accessed July 19, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Alastair Beach: Postcard from Cairo: An animal tale that was turtle hokum. In: independent.co.uk. April 29, 2013, accessed July 19, 2015 .
  6. ↑ World's 2nd oldest turtle dies in Giza Zoo , The Cairo Post, April 21, 2015
  7. ↑ n-tv: Faruk turtle died April 7, 2006 (accessed on 11 July 2015)
  8. ↑ Juan Pablo Parrilla: Muere a los 270 años la tortuga más vieja del mundo. In: infobae.com. Retrieved July 22, 2015 (Spanish).
  9. ↑ Mourning for Faruk's turtle on www.abendblatt.de, April 8, 2006 (accessed on July 11, 2015)
  10. ↑ Tom Rowley / Ju Zhang: Meet the 183-year-old tortoise who is the world's oldest living land creature. In: telegraph.co.uk. February 3, 2015, accessed July 22, 2015 .