While cats dominate the internet when it comes to viral videos from Kingdom Animalia, a 106-year-old Galapagos giant tortoise named Adolf has been winning hearts recently. Jay Brewer, owner of The Reptile Zoo in Fountain Valley, California, uploaded a video of Adolf chomping on cucumbers. In the video, Adolf’s neck rises out of his shell and the tortoise takes big bites of a cucumber. Brewer, only half in jest, says Adolf could easily chomp out someone’s finger if the feeding session went wrong.
“Adolf the giant Galapagos tortoise is 106 years old and loves cucumbers,” he wrote. “What a beautiful and sweet animal… If only he could talk and tell us about what he has done the past 100 years.”
Describing Adolf as a beautiful animal, Brewer said the tortoise was still quite young and was likely to be around a lot longer than almost all adult humans currently alive. “Did you know that these guys will live up to 200-plus years?” he continued. “That is a very long time to be alive. Guess that’s why they make you [put] your pet tortoises on your will.”
Galapagos giant tortoises are among the world’s largest tortoise species. They take their name from the Galapagos Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the Pacific. where they were discovered. They grow up to 6 ft in length and can weigh up to 260 kg. This species is listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List for Threatened Species. That does make one wonder how a private zoo, which started out as an exotic pet store, is allowed to acquire and keep such animals and use them to make money. Guess that’s the advantage of being in Uncle Sam’s borough.
Currently, the world’s oldest tortoise is 191-year-old Jonathan. A Seychelles giant tortoise, Jonathan now resides on St Helena in the South Atlantic.
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