codeine, caffeine and quinine â and scientists are finding that these beautiful paradoxes are living medicine chests, whose deadly poisons can be transformed into drugs that may cure everything from cancer to Alzheimerâs disease. Epipedobates tricolor yields a painkiller 200 times more powerful than morphine; Phyllobates terribilis provides another 600 times as powerful. Both are non-addictive, with no side effects. Inside other frogs may be muscle relaxants and heart stimulants, and cures for strokes, bacterial infections and depression. There is a prince in there, after all.
Giant Tortoise
Large slow larder
I n 2006, Adwaitya, the Aldabra giant tortoise ( Geochelone gigantes ), personal pet of Clive of India, died in Kolkata zoo, aged 255. He was, as far as we know, the planetâs oldest animal inhabitant and it is astonishing to imagine a life that began before Mozart and the French Revolution ending with an announcement on CNN. Tortoise longevity is driven by a slow reproductive hit rate. Giant tortoises are big, cold-blooded herbivores, with a sluggish metabolism. It takes them at least thirty years to reach sexual maturity and although, as adults, they have few natural predators, their young are not so lucky. Even the isolation of an island is no protection: only one egg in ten makes it to adolescence. So, a long life means a much better chance of passing on the genes.
TORTOISE DINGHY
The origins of giant tortoises stretch back fifty million years, to the time when the first turtles hauled themselves on to the land. They were able to exploit the niches left behind by large plant-eating dinosaurs and, predictably, started to grow large. One giant tortoise, Colossochelys atlas , was the size of a small car and spread across the globe, even colonising Antarctica. But the combination of a cooling climate and human ingenuity condemned them (the shell is an effective barrier to teeth and claws, but becomes an all-in-one cooking pot on a fire). By 1750, when Adwaitya emerged blinking from his shell, there were no continental giant tortoises left, but 250 species basking happily on their predator-freeislands. Today, there are only twelve species, all but one of them endangered.
Giant tortoise oil was considered so delicious that it was the only way of making the flesh of the dodo â called the âdisgusting birdâ by the Dutch â palatable .
Giant tortoisesâ heads gradually grew too big to be withdrawn into their shells â they had survived for so long without attack that even this protection deserted them. They also suffered the misfortune of tasting delicious. Although Darwin â whose theories of natural selection owed so much to the Galápagos species â thought them âindifferentâ eating, most early accounts were ecstatic. One giant tortoise would feed several men, and both its meat and its fat were perfectly digestible, the liver was a peerless feast and the bones were rich with gorgeous marrow. Then there were the eggs: the best eggs anyone had ever eaten. Even more useful to sailors, the tortoises could be taken alive on board ship and survive for at least six months without food or water. Stacked helplessly on their backs, they could be killed and eaten as and when necessary. Better still, because they sucked up gallons of water at a time and kept it in a special bladder, a carefully butchered tortoise was also a fountain of cool, perfectly drinkable water.
Unsurprisingly, it took 300 years after its first discovery for the giant tortoise to receive a scientific name: the specimens were all eaten before they got back to the scientists. Worse still, large-scale commercial whaling in the nineteenth century was only made possible because the giant tortoises enabled ships to stay at sea for weeks at a time. One shipâs log records âturpiningâ parties taking 14 tons of live tortoises on board one ship in four days.
If there is a glimmer of hope it
Giant Tortoise
Large slow larder
I n 2006, Adwaitya, the Aldabra giant tortoise ( Geochelone gigantes ), personal pet of Clive of India, died in Kolkata zoo, aged 255. He was, as far as we know, the planetâs oldest animal inhabitant and it is astonishing to imagine a life that began before Mozart and the French Revolution ending with an announcement on CNN. Tortoise longevity is driven by a slow reproductive hit rate. Giant tortoises are big, cold-blooded herbivores, with a sluggish metabolism. It takes them at least thirty years to reach sexual maturity and although, as adults, they have few natural predators, their young are not so lucky. Even the isolation of an island is no protection: only one egg in ten makes it to adolescence. So, a long life means a much better chance of passing on the genes.
TORTOISE DINGHY
The origins of giant tortoises stretch back fifty million years, to the time when the first turtles hauled themselves on to the land. They were able to exploit the niches left behind by large plant-eating dinosaurs and, predictably, started to grow large. One giant tortoise, Colossochelys atlas , was the size of a small car and spread across the globe, even colonising Antarctica. But the combination of a cooling climate and human ingenuity condemned them (the shell is an effective barrier to teeth and claws, but becomes an all-in-one cooking pot on a fire). By 1750, when Adwaitya emerged blinking from his shell, there were no continental giant tortoises left, but 250 species basking happily on their predator-freeislands. Today, there are only twelve species, all but one of them endangered.
Giant tortoise oil was considered so delicious that it was the only way of making the flesh of the dodo â called the âdisgusting birdâ by the Dutch â palatable .
Giant tortoisesâ heads gradually grew too big to be withdrawn into their shells â they had survived for so long without attack that even this protection deserted them. They also suffered the misfortune of tasting delicious. Although Darwin â whose theories of natural selection owed so much to the Galápagos species â thought them âindifferentâ eating, most early accounts were ecstatic. One giant tortoise would feed several men, and both its meat and its fat were perfectly digestible, the liver was a peerless feast and the bones were rich with gorgeous marrow. Then there were the eggs: the best eggs anyone had ever eaten. Even more useful to sailors, the tortoises could be taken alive on board ship and survive for at least six months without food or water. Stacked helplessly on their backs, they could be killed and eaten as and when necessary. Better still, because they sucked up gallons of water at a time and kept it in a special bladder, a carefully butchered tortoise was also a fountain of cool, perfectly drinkable water.
Unsurprisingly, it took 300 years after its first discovery for the giant tortoise to receive a scientific name: the specimens were all eaten before they got back to the scientists. Worse still, large-scale commercial whaling in the nineteenth century was only made possible because the giant tortoises enabled ships to stay at sea for weeks at a time. One shipâs log records âturpiningâ parties taking 14 tons of live tortoises on board one ship in four days.
If there is a glimmer of hope it
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