A 250-Year-Old Passes....

[flere-imsaho]

Story:

Every now and then, the world marks the death of an exceptionally old human being, like Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122. But today we pause to note the death of Adwaitya, an Aldabran tortoise who died last Wednesday at the Calcutta zoo. He is believed to have been about 250, nearly 80 years older than the next-oldest animal, a 176-year-old Galapagos tortoise living in Australia. We are ready simply to marvel at the fact of living to such a great age. But tortoise watchers of an earlier era were more likely to wonder why tortoises lived to such a great age.

The classic statement comes from Gilbert White, the 18th-century naturalist, who had a tortoise of his own to watch. "It is a matter of wonder," he wrote, "to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that appears to relish it so little."

Such a very old tortoise as Adwaitya, which means "the one and only," must have wondered, in turn, why Providence bestows such short lives upon humans. He had lived in the Calcutta zoo since 1875 and was one of four tortoises captured from Aldabra — which one tortoise historian calls a "low coralline atoll ... in a little-visited part of the Indian Ocean about 400 kilometers north of Madagascar" — and presented to Lord Robert Clive, who was the architect, if that is the word, of the British empire in India. If Adwaitya was truly 250, he was born in the same year as Mozart.

No species really understands the life span of another species. We are as puzzled by the brevity of a mayfly's life as we are by the longevity of Adwaitya's. But what puzzles us isn't the chronology of these lives — the way they stretch, or don't stretch, across the calendar. It's the thought of being in them. What makes it all the harder to imagine is the very difference in the way that humans and tortoises age. A woman who has lived to be 122 is merely a husk of herself. At 122, Adwaitya was still a comparative youth, with more than half his life to go. We will suppose that he relished it right up to the end.

Well, I thought it was interesting....

[Antmeister]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

...Well, I thought it was interesting....

So did I. I didn't realize any animal lived past 150 years. Shows my ignorance.

[Mustang]

I found it interesting myself.. I mean, the tortoise was alive for 20 years by the time the United States declared independence..

Just think if that was a human.. the stories that could be told would be absolutely amazing.

[JeeberD]

I read about that last week and I thought it was interesting as well. Apparently it's not 100% certain that it was 250 years old, though...

A giant aldabra tortoise thought to be around 250 years old has died in the Kolkata zoo of liver failure, authorities said on Thursday.

The tortoise had been the pet of Robert Clive, the famous British military officer in colonial India around the middle of the 18th century, a local minister in West Bengal state said.

Local authorities say the tortoise, named "Addwaitya" meaning the "The One and Only" in Bengali, was the oldest tortoise in the world but they have not presented scientific proof to back up their claim.

"Historical records show he was a pet of British general Robert Clive of the East India Company and had spent several years in his sprawling estate before he was brought to the zoo about 130 years ago," West Bengal Forest Minister Jogesh Barman said.

"We have documents to prove that he was more than 150 years old, but we have pieced together other evidence like statements from authentic sources and it seems that he is more than 250 years old," he said.

The minister said details about Addwaitya's early life showed that British sailors had brought him from the Seychelles islands and presented him to Clive, who was rising fast in the East India Company's military hierarchy.

On Thursday, the tortoise's enclosure wore a deserted look.

"This is a sad day for us. We will miss him very much," a zoo keeper said.

Wild Aldabra tortoises are found in the Aldabra island in the Indian Ocean Seychelles islands. They average about 120 kg. It is believed that tortoises are the longest lived of all animals, with life spans often surpassing 100 years.

[JeeberD]

Originally Posted by Mustang

Just think if that was a human.. the stories that could be told would be absolutely amazing.

Yeah, man! Those past 130 years in the zoo must have been spectacular!