The giant tortoise, known as Harriet, who was believed to have been one of three tortoises taken from the Galapagos Islands by Charles Darwin on his historic 1835 voyage aboard HMS Beagle, has died aged 176.
It spent a few years in Britain before being moved to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens in Australia’s tropical Queensland state in the mid-1800s, where it was mistaken for a male and nicknamed Harry.
Harriet was believed to be the world’s oldest living tortoise, and one of its oldest living creatures. Despite her longevity, however, Harriet is not the world’s oldest known tortoise.
That title was awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records to Tui Malila, a Madagascar radiated tortoise that was presented to the royal family of Tonga by British explorer Capt. James Cook in the 1770s. It died in 1965 at the age of 188.
