"Borrow to the ephemera generation, rather know the year of the turtle and crane." Guo Pu used "Ephemera" to mean short life in "You Xian" and "turtle crane" to represent longevity. In fact, cranes do not have much to do with longevity, but the turtle is truly worthy of the title of "longevity general" in nature.
It is said that raising turtles is good enough to send you away, and there is really such a tortoise that has been forgotten by the god of death in history. If calculated according to the time, he was born from the Qianlong era and lived all the way to modern times, "sending" away 3 breeders.
When it comes to the longest-lived animals in nature, many people's first impression is a turtle. In fact, there are many species of turtles, and different types of turtles have a short lifespan. As the saying goes, "the thousand-year-old king is eighty thousand years old turtle", although the turtle cannot live to tens of thousands of years, it is still not a problem to live for hundreds of years. In particular, a giant turtle that lives on an isolated island in the Indian Ocean can even live longer than 250 years.
On the east coast of Africa, about 400 km north of the island of Madagascar, there is an archipelago. The archipelago, called Aldabra Atoll, is made up of four coral islands. On this coral reef, the world's longest-lived turtles live, this group of turtles belongs to the tortoises, hence the name Aldabra tortoises.
The Aldabra tortoise was first discovered in the 16th century, when mauritius islands and Reunion islands were also abundant, but under the hunting of people, almost all the Aldabra tortoises in the world were extinct. Only this coral reef in the western Sea of the Indian Ocean remains, and some of the population survives.
The world's longest-lived tortoise comes from the island of Aldabra, its name is Adveta, which comes from the Indian Sanskrit word, which means "unique". The tortoise was discovered by the British East India Company in the early 17th century, and was over 100 years old when it was discovered, and it was subsequently given to the East India Company's general Robert Clive as a pet.
In this way, this 100-year-old tortoise was sent to India from Aldabra Island across the ocean and entered Robert's manor to live a retirement life. But before it could die, its master, Robert Clive, died. It was also sent to a zoo in India for care, where Advita attracted four successive keepers.
In 1875, Advita was sent to the zoo, where he ate more than 10 kilograms of food per meal and weighed 250 kilograms. Advita's neck alone can stretch up to 1.3 meters, and its shell is large enough to withstand the standing of two adult men.
Life in the zoo is very comfortable, and although Advita eats a lot, most of his energy is stored, so he can survive during the war years when food is scarce. Some of the other animals in the zoo starved to death due to lack of food, but Advita kept alive slowly, from entering the zoo in 1875 to her death in 2006, Advita sent away three keepers.
It wasn't until after its death that people judged the true age of the turtle through its bones. Advita's tortoiseshell and skeleton suggest that he was most likely born in 1750 and lived to 2006 at the age of 256. To know that 1750 in our country or the Qing Dynasty, belongs to the Qianlong fifteen years of the Qing Dynasty, Advita is worthy of being forgotten by the god of death tortoise, born during the Qianlong years, but hard to live to the 21st century.
However, although Advita lives a long life, they are still creatures in nature, they have a long lifespan, but they cannot resist the hunting of humans. Advita's population has been endangered since the 17th century, and during the Great Voyage, many crew members and sailors loved to hunt the tortoise.
The reason is very simple and very cruel, the tortoise meat, although not very tasty, is a rare fresh meat in sailing travel. Because tortoises can stay uneaten for a long time and will not die. This led to many sailors taking the tortoises on board without fear of spoiling the meat and being ready to slaughter the tortoises for meat.
But it was also because of the massacre of sailors and crews that the Aldabra tortoise quickly withered away, and the population of the modern Aldabra tortoise was limited to the Aldabra Coral Reef Archipelago. And people are finally aware of the need to protect this race, after decades of protection, the Aldabra tortoise has finally changed from an endangered species to a vulnerable species, and perhaps in the future, it is not impossible for a tortoise to live longer than it in Advita's population.