Galapagos [The Giant Tortoise] - Live Forever
The London Zoological Gardens contain an Elephantine tortoise from the Seychelles which is supposed to be from one hundred to two hundred years old...
by Manpreet
Illustrations by Amarjeet Malik

Giant tortoises are among the few creatures that are known to have an extreme life span greater than that of man. There is unquestionable proof that Giant Galapagos tortoises have lived one hundred and fifty years, and there is reason for believing that they sometimes attain an age of two centuries. Scientists have estimated the age of some specimens at four hundred years, but these estimates are little more than speculations, aided to a limited extent by the scale marks or rings of growth on the plates. The London Zoological Gardens contain an Elephantine tortoise from the Seychelles which is supposed to be from one hundred to two hundred years old. Tortoises in the South Seas have been known to have a weight of more than one thousand pounds. Reports of ordinary land turtles bearing dates on their shells cannot be admitted as evidence in determining the extreme life span of these reptiles. There is too much room for mistake and fraud in such cases. Mischievous boys with jackknives are fond of carving 1776, 1812 and other historic dates on the shells of turtles. A case in point is the famous tortoise of Captain james Cook. According to a story which has never been authenticated, Captain Cook captured a tortoise on the Galapagos Islands in 1773 and, after carving that date on its back, released the reptile on one of the islands of the Tonga group. Newspapers periodically publish reports from persons who claim that they have seen this tortoise on different islands in the South Seas. Assuming that the reports are correct in stating that a tortoise bearing the date 1773 is seen occasionally, there is no accurate method by which we could determine how, when or in what region the carving was done.