OTTAWA CITIZEN (Ontario) 11 October 05 Tortoise controversy comes out of its shell: Did 'Harriet' once belong to Darwin? A British researcher wants to find out (Giles Whittell, The Times, London UK)
A giant Galapagos tortoise born when Queen Victoria was still a teenager is about to celebrate her 175th birthday under a cloud of genteel controversy over her bona fides.
Harriet, who was mistaken for a male for at least the first 124 years of her life, is thought by her Australian handlers to have been plucked from obscurity in 1835 by none other than Charles Darwin.
That would make her a key player in the evolution of Darwin's The Origin of Species, as well as the oldest creature currently walking the planet.
But a British micro-paleontologist who has undertaken the most serious reconstruction yet of Harriet's epic plod from the eastern Pacific to Australia believes she was picked up by whalers for something more prosaic than research, namely her urine (for drinking) and fresh meat.
Is she really Darwin's tortoise? The theory rests on claims she was one of four giant tortoises known to have been collected by Darwin's expedition to the Galapagos in 1835. The four were loaded on to the Beagle, reaching England in October 1836, where they swiftly took sick.
Two were dead by the following spring. According to biographies offered by Harriet's successive Australian keepers, she was one of the other two, shipped to Australia in 1841 by John Wickham, a shipmate of Darwin from the Beagle.
This story is supported by the presence of another giant tortoise in the Queensland Museum in Brisbane. With the words "Tom -- giant land tortoise died 1929 Brisbane Botanic Gardens" carved on its shell, Tom is thought to be one of three tortoises brought to the country for exhibition in 1841. Harriet may be the third. However, analysis of her mitochondrial DNA by U.S. researchers shows she is almost certainly from Santa Cruz island in the Galapagos. The Beagle's tortoises were taken from Espanola, Santa Maria and San Salvador.
British expert Paul Chambers has shown that Mr. Wickham was probably in Australia when he is supposed to have been travelling there with giant tortoises in his luggage.
"Some in Australia are confident, but there is certainly a bit of a dispute about whether (Harriet) was actually part of Darwin's collection or not," Colin McCarthy, collection manager of reptiles, amphibians and fish at the Natural History Museum, said yesterday.
What is not in doubt is Harriet's age. The U.S. research on tortoise DNA "baselines" showed big changes in tortoise DNA on Santa Cruz island after a terrible cull there. Harriet's DNA predates the cull, making her at least 170.
Harriet has lived at Steve Irwin's Crocodile Hunter's Australia Zoo on Queensland's Sunshine Coast since 1987.
Today, Harriet is fond of eggplant, zucchini, beans and parsley. There are thought to be barely a dozen of her sub-species left. This is partly her fault. She still ovulates, but has not had a mate for 100 years.