The Aldabra Giant Tortoise (Geochelone gigantea), from the islands of the Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles, is one of the largest tortoises in the world.Its carapace averages 120 cm in length and is a dark blue or black color with a high domed shape. It has stocky, heavily scaled legs to support its heavy body. The neck of the Aldabra Giant Tortoise is very long, even for its great size, which helps it to exploit tree branches up to a meter from the ground as a food source. The size of the Aldabra Giant Tortoise can be upto 4 ft. in length and weight can be about 550 lbs. Large tortoises are among the longest-lived animals on the planet. Some individual Aldabra Giant Tortoises are thought to be over 100 years of age.
How Aldabra Giant Tortoise appeared on stamps ?
- Niraj Kumar Sinha
I wish to throw some light on how the stamp on the Aldabra Giant Tortoise came about.We all remember a news article came in papers about the death of Adwaita, the giant turtle of Kolkata zoo. It was decided to issue a stamp on this longest living animal specimen on earth. Even in the plant kingdom very few species survive this much or longer. Despite having a traditional machinery, we decided to have hexagonal stamps, a first in India and perhaps one of the very few in the world. The idea was to draw a resemblance with the markings on its carapace. As you see in the information brochure, the tortoise was brought to India in the time of Clive.India Security Press did a courageous job of carrying out perforations in such a manner that stamp could not only get a hexagonal shape,in a sheetlet upto two star shaped stamps could also be easily taken out.This was achieved on traditional linear perforation machinery by doing some simple geometric drawings in the philately division of the department.It is a beautiful stamp and one is almopst moved to see this ancient relic who was alive only two years ago, proudly looking up.
From Se-tenant Album of Shrikant Parikh
Mathura Museum - 9 October 1974
Baroda Museum - 20 December 1994
