Richard Muirhead sent me this from the China Mail, June 18, 1947. It is particularly interesting but for all the wrong reasons. As Richard points out "According to my `The Guiness Book of Animals Records` Mark Carwardine p.181 (1995) the oldest authenticated age for a tortoise was 152 years". I believe that a tortoise in Tonga belonging to the late Queen Salote lived longer than that, but this is just a hearsay story my mother toldf me when I was young.
However, the idea of a tortoise (or indeed any vertebrate) living 1,000 years is highly unlikely. I would refer the gentle reader to the Chinese delicacy of 1,000 year old eggs, which are seldom even a tenth of that age. The term "1,000 years" generally just means "Old".
The next interesting thing is that the animal is supposed to have originally come from the Paracel Islands. This is remarkably unlikely because as gfar as I can ascertain there are no land reptiles living on these islands, although it must be admitted that there are at least two species of marine turtle.
Finally, I have no idea what CNC$4,000 refers to in today's currency, but it would seem to be an enormous amount of money to spend on the upkeep of a tortoise, or indeed any animal. I think that this news item is most probably a satire with some social or political message that meant a lot to the readers of this English language Chinese newspaper, but which - after the passage of 63 years - is now obscure.
Ideas anyone?
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