I Am Tortoise. Hear Me ROAR!
The span of history a giant tortoise can live through is vividly illustrated in a remarkable picture on the British island colony of St Helena in the year 1900.
One of the men behind them (in the second picture) is believed to be an Afrikaner captured during the Boer War, which lasted from 1899-1902. The remote South Atlantic island, the final prison of Napoleon from 1815 until his death there in 1821, later housed a Boer War prison camp holding 6,000 inmates.
The scene is thought to be the grounds of Plantation House, the St Helena governor’s residence in the island capital of Jamestown, where three giant tortoises were brought as ornamental pets from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean in 1882.
Continue reading… “World’s Oldest Creature?”
