YAHOO! INDIA ; Peerless tortoise gets a christening

YAHOO! INDIA (India) 18 August 05 Peerless tortoise gets a christening

Kolkata (IANS) After two centuries and more of anonymity, the giant Aldabra-Seychelles tortoise that quietly roams the Alipore Zoo here has finally got a name - Adwaitya.
All of 255 years and maybe more, Adwaitya, meaning the peerless one, was christened by West Bengal Forest Minister Jogesh Burman Wednesday.
'Tigers and lions have been named before. Now for the first time we name a tortoise,' said Burman who picked the name from a list of 30 suggested to him.
In deference to his more than two-and-a-half-century existence, this grand old resident of Kolkata has also been given more green space to amble along.
'He is the oldest living thing in India. So we have decided to celebrate his long innings by giving him a name and more space,' Burman said.
The 250-kg male is a vegetarian. He was brought here 255 years ago by the British colonialists and was shifted to the zoo after it came up 130 years ago.
Since then, the dark grey land tortoise has lived in a small, rocky enclosure.
'We now want to add a bit of garden to its enclosure,' Burman said.
Alipore Zoo director Subir Chowdhury said there were documents to prove the tortoise is about 255 years old.
'A tortoise of this species can live up to 320 years according to available records. He may even be over 300 years. We are digging into our records to find out exactly how old he is,' Burman said.
If only the tortoise could speak, what a tale he would have to tell!
http://in.news.yahoo.com/050818/43/5zrgw.html

THE HINDU (Chennai, India) 18 August 05 A peerless possession in the zoo (Marcus Dam)
Kolkata: A male Aldabra giant tortoise (Geochelone gigantean), the oldest animal in Kolkata's Alipore Zoological Garden, was christened ``Addyaita' (peerless) by West Bengal Forest Minister Jogesh Burman here on Wednesday.
Though the actual age of the reptile is not known, zoo officials said it could be more than 250 years old. It was one of the four tortoises brought to the zoo when it was set up in 1875 from the menagerie at Latbagan in Barrackpore, West Bengal, established by Lord Wellesley in 1800.
``As the growth rate of these tortoises is very slow it may be presumed that at the time of its arrival in the zoo its age might have been 120 years or more, given its size then,'' an official said.
The others have died over the past 130 years. To protect the surviving specimen from teasing by visitors it was shifted to a secluded enclosure. It was moved into the present octagonal enclosure in 1994.
With the small neck zone on the carapace, this species, found in Aldabra and on the Seychelles Island in the Indian Ocean, differs from other giant tortoises found on the Galapagos Island in the Pacific.
http://www.hindu.com/2005/08/18/stories/2005081802891300.htm