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Giant Tortoise Shell To Find Home In Zoo's Natural History Museum

Hyderabad: Chanakya, the 125-year-old Giant Galapagos tortoise which breathed its last in the city Nehru Zoological Park, will be remembered by the zoo with authorities deciding to keep on display its carapace in the zoo's natural history museum. The tortoise died on March 16.

Chanakya's carapace – the hard outer shell – will be cleaned and placed on display at the museum, zoo curator Dr Sunil S. Hiremath has said. The rest of the remains of the zoo's longest inhabitant, were incinerated after the post-mortem that showed that the animal had died of natural causes resulting from multiple organ failure.

The tortoise's shell had not only weathered a span of three centuries during Chanakya's life time, but also shenanigans in 2015 by a 24-year-old man, Fazal Shaik, who jumped into its enclosure, climbed on the tortoise, stood on it, and posed for pictures. He was arrested by the police following a complaint from the zoo officials after his actions came to light following him posting the pictures on social media platforms.

125-yr-old Giant Galapagos Tortoise Breathes His Last In Zoo

Hyderabad: The city of Hyderabad on Saturday lost its oldest resident, Chanakya, who was aged 125 years.

Chanakya, a Galapagos giant tortoise, was also the oldest inmate of the Nehru Zoological Park in the city. To the best of the knowledge of his caretakers, Chanakya did not leave anyone behind, and he was so old that origins of his arrival in the city are lost in the mists of time.

The zoo, in a news release, announced the death of the tortoise, saying its life – that spanned three centuries going by its reported age – came to an end due to age-related complications. Chanakya had a number G1, and shared his enclosure with another of its kind, known as G2, which zoo officials said is 95-years-old.

"It was hard this morning when we realized he was dead," said Dr Sunil S. Hiremath, the zoo curator. "The first time I saw this tortoise was when I was in high school and during a visit to Hyderabad, went to the zoo in 1996," he said, recalling his memories of the tortoise.

The 125-year-old tortoise was off food for the past 10 days, zoo veterinarian Dr M.A. Hakeem said. The initial postmortem report revealed that the tortoise died due to multiple organ failure.

"I tried to hand feed Chanakya for about eight days but it simply would not eat anything even when offered its favourite food, carrot, sweet potato, and banana," Syed Jahangir, animal keeper at the zoo, who looked after the tortoise for the last eight years, told Deccan Chronicle. "It also used to like soaked chana," he said.

Jahangir, accompanied by another staffer of the zoo, discovered Chanakya dead on Saturday morning. "Every morning, we cleaned the animal house, and the small pool in which it would cool down. Today morning, when we went, it was not moving and we realised it had died," he said.

With summer heat picking up, among the other things Jahangir did was to place a gunny sack on the shell of the tortoise and pour water on it every hour to keep the sack soaked, and help Chanakya stay cool, just as he did with the other 95-year-old Galapagos giant tortoise, G2.

Chanakya was a resident of the Nehru Zoological Park from its very inception in 1963, after a collection of animals from the Hyderabad zoo as it was then known and housed in Bagh-e-Aam – today's Public Garden – was shifted to the new zoo.

No one is really sure where Chanakya first came from. May be it was donated to the zoo in Bagh-e-Aam, or someone got it in an animal exchange with another zoo, or maybe it was bought by the then zoo officials. But if the age of the now no more tortoise is anything to go by, then its life spanned three centuries, and the year it was born in, 1899, was the one when Lord Curzon was appointed as the Viceroy of India, Swami Vivekananda set up the Ramakrishna Mission in Calcutta, with the year also witnessing the birth of freedom fighter Uddham Singh.

On Saturday, it lumbered off this planet.

Three-legged Tortoise Settles Into New Life On Wheels At Zoo

A three-legged tortoise which was rescued from smugglers is settling into a new life on wheels at a zoo.

The ploughshare tortoise, which is now at Chester Zoo where it has been nicknamed Hope, was discovered by customs officials in Hong Kong in 2019 in a suitcase with 56 other live, endangered tortoises.

The owner of the suitcase, a would-be wildlife trader travelling from the Comoro Islands, off the coast of East Africa, was later jailed for two years, a zoo spokesman said.

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The male tortoise was initially taken to Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden Wild Animal Rescue Centre in Hong Kong where it was found to be missing its front left leg, as well as claws on its hind left leg.

To help the creature get about, experts fitted three support rollers under its lower shell to help it balance.

Further modifications have been made to the wheels by vets at the zoo since it arrived in the UK.

The animal, nicknamed Hope, was rescued from smugglers.

Conservationists are now aiming for Hope to live up to its nickname by joining a European conservation-breeding programme and helping save the species from extinction.

Curator of lower vertebrates and invertebrates at Chester Zoo, Dr Gerardo Garcia, said: "Hope is an incredibly special tortoise, for many reasons.

"Firstly, ploughshare tortoises are exceptionally rare. It's not just the world's most threatened species of tortoise, it's one of the most threatened animals on the planet, full stop.

"Fewer than 300 now remain in the wild, mostly due to their overexploitation by illegal wildlife traders – leaving them functionally extinct in their home of Madagascar.

The tortoise was missing its front left leg and hind left claws when it was rescued (Chester Zoo/PA)

"In addition Hope has a remarkable life story, having been rescued from smugglers, discovered to have a missing leg and then having a prosthetic mobility support specially fitted to help him get around.

"It works wonderfully well – he moves even quicker than his three neighbours.

"He's settling in nicely to his new home and hopefully, in several years' time once he's more developed, he'll go on to produce offspring and contribute to the survival of the species thanks to the vital insurance population in conservation zoos." 

In the wild, the ploughshare tortoise is only found on a small remote stretch of sand, rock and bamboo on Madagascar.

Just 63 of the animals live legally outside Madagascar as part of the conservation breeding programmes.

Four of them are at Chester Zoo where they are being observed by scientists using 24-hour CCTV surveillance.

The animals, with distinctive gold and black shells, can fetch exceptionally high prices on the black market.

Mike Jordan, director of animals and plants at Chester Zoo, added:  "This is a species that's sadly under huge pressure for its survival and there's a very real possibility that this species could be lost forever.

"That's why Hope is such an important addition to the zoo. We refuse to sit back and see this incredible species disappear and so our aim now is to maintain an ark population, by coming together with some of the world's other leading conservation zoos to breed a genetically viable safety net population and prevent its extinction."

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