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FOCUS - Darwin Bi-centerary |
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| ˇE Death of Darwin's Tortoise ( c.1830 - June 23,2006) |
| When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands as part of his round-the-world survey expedition in 1835 he captured three tortoise and took them with him. The one which would eventually become known as Harriet (Geochelone elephantopus porteri), was just five years old at the time. The story goes that Darwin took Harriet back to England with him and gave her to the Bishop of Llandaff in Wales, from here she was bought to her final home in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Australia, by a retired captain of the HMS Beagle, and then spent her last years living at Steve Irwinˇ¦s zoo in Beerwah, Queensland, Australia. She died at the age |
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of 176 of a heart attack on June 23rd, 2006. At the time, she weighed 150 kg, and was the oldest living animal in captivity. However, some doubt has been cast on this story by the fact that Darwin had never visited the island that Harriet originally came from.
In August 1994, a historian from Mareeba published a letter in the local newspaper about two tortoises he remembered at the Botanic Gardens in 1922. The garden caretakers of the time were saying that the tortoises had arrived at the Gardens in 1860 as a donation from John Clements Wickham, who was the First Lieutenant (and later Captain) of HMS Beagle under Fitzroy during the voyage of the Beagle in 1835. Wickham actually brought three tortoises to Australia when he arrived after retiring from the Royal Navy in 1841; these lived at Newstead House from 1841 to 1860. Records show that the tortoises were donated to the Botanic Gardens in 1860 when Wickham retired as Government Resident of Moreton Bay (now Brisbane) and left Australia for Paris. There is evidence from letters that Charles Darwin was aware that Wickham had these tortoises, as he sent a letter to Thomas Henry Huxley in 1860 informing him that he should speak with Wickham in Paris about the last of the tortoises from the 1835 expedition because he had them. This makes it at least possible that the three tortoises at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens were personally collected by Darwin.
Harriet was said to be very good-natured. She loved the attention of humans and enjoyed it when people patted her on the scute. Harriet spent a majority of her day napping at her home pond. Her favorite food was hibiscus flowers.
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