If you keep Cute Overload bookmarked, then have your “awwws” at hand before you read this article in The Guardian about Timmy, a Herrmann's tortoise.
Timmy, who makes his home at the Tortoise Garden sanctuary in Cornwall, had been bullied by other tortoises, and seemed morose until the sanctuary’s owner provided him with a plastic companion, Tanya. Craig B. Stanford and friend
Now Timmy “fetches her food (and does not seem to mind that she does not eat it) and nuzzles his head against hers. He will not go to bed unless she is put into his hut before him…The lack of response does not seem to bother Timmy.”
Coincidentally (or perhaps because tortoise owners have always been suckers for alliteration), “Timothy” was also the name of the Testudo graeca brought to England by a sailor in 1740 and bought by Rebecca Snooke. When Snooke died in 1780, Timothy was inherited by her nephew, clergyman and renowned naturalist Gilbert White. Tortoise ownership had been in vogue in Britain since the 1600s, but Timothy became the first pet tortoise to have her life history recorded in detail; White, also the author of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, carefully documented Timothy’s weight, swimming ability, hibernation patterns, hearing, and diet.
Timmy and Timothy were both lucky: according to Craig B. Stanford, “Of the tortoises that arrive in Europe healthy enough to be sold in a pet shop, 80 percent die within their first year in the hands of well-intentioned but incapable owners. By the third year out of the wild, an estimated 92 percent of all imported turtles and tortoises are dead.” These startling statistics, as well as Timothy’s story, appear in Stanford’s new book, The Last Tortoise: A Tale of Extinction in Our Lifetime.
Both a love letter to an animal that Stanford calls “the ultimate humble, unassuming creature, expecting nothing more than to be left alone deep inside that marvelous shell to live its long life peacefully,” and a fierce warning of the immediate dangers tortoises face from forces like smuggling, habitat loss, and human appetites, The Last Tortoise is an affecting, illuminating book that American Scientist says is “remarkably thorough, but tinged with anger and sadness at the senselessness of the crisis.”
