Charles Darwin's tortoise, Harriet, has died at the Australia Zoo near Brisbane. Darwin brought Harriet (then called Harry: Darwin was quite a naturalist, but an undistinguished tortoise-sexer as these things go) from the Galapagos Islands in 1835. I had the pleasure of meeting Harriet last spring. She was awesomely photogenic, and her keeper told us that she'd roamed free in the Brisbane botanical gardens, giving kids tortoise-back rides, until the botanists got tired of her eating the rare plants. At 176, she was thought to be the world's oldest living tortoise.
(Thanks, WY!)
Update: Natalija sends in this story that suggests that Harriet was the second-oldest tortoise in the world.
