The giant tortoises in Balkanyi’s etching were donated to the Jardins des Plantes in 1923 by a French industrialist from Mauritius who retired to France and brought them with him. He used to visit them regularly and the largest, named Kiki, used to stretch out her neck for him to scratch.
When Kiki died aged 146 in 2009, his vet told French radio “He was so vigorous in his pursuit of female tortoises that his grunts could be heard from the other end of the zoo and the Jardin des Plantes. … from time to time I even saw him go after a wheelbarrow. You see what we were dealing with …”
