At 68, you might think about settling down. Give away some of those wilder pursuits of youth. Read and travel more. Buy slippers.
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Not Hugo. In relative terms, the Australian Reptile Park’s giant tortoise is still a spring chicken. Barely scraping middle age.
Hugo arrived at the Australian Reptile Park as an infant from a zoo in Switzerland and, by all accounts, has a long and healthy life ahead which, by conservative estimates, could be decades.
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“Hugo is a really special tortoise and loves all the attention he receives, which is great because he is such a hit with visitors,” general manager Tim Faulkner said after Hugo celebrated his 68th birthday with a watermelon cake on Tuesday.
At his last weigh-in, Hugo tipped the scales at 175.5 kilograms - a 10-kilogram smidge of weight gain since last year's checkup in September.
The fully-grown tortoise is just over one metre in length.
The average lifespan of Hugo's folk is around a century. Australia's oldest Galapagos Tortoise, Harriet, lived to be 175 before dying in 2006.
Visitors to the Australian Reptile Park are able to see Hugo on exhibit every day of the school holidays as well as get up close and personal with him on his daily walk at 12pm.
