Hitler’s alligator bites the dust – at the age of 84
AN alligator believed to be the world’s oldest and once rumoured to have belonged to Adolf Hitler has died aged 84.
Saturn was born in the Mississippi in 1936. He was captured and shipped to Germany where he became a pre-war star attraction at Berlin Zoo and admired by the Nazi Party leader.
He survived intense Allied bombing of the German capital, including air strikes on the zoo itself in November 1943. The so-called Battle of Berlin destroyed the zoo’s aquarium and caused the deaths of many animals, including several crocodiles.
Saturn somehow escaped their fate and lived for three years in the war-ravaged city, surviving, according to one theory, in basements and the sewage system.
At the end of the conflict, he was given by British soldiers to their Russian counterparts.
The Red Army transported Saturn to Moscow where he has remained a huge hit for seven decades with visitors to the city’s zoo until his death last Friday morning.
In a statement Moscow Zoo said it had the honour of keeping Saturn for 74 years, adding: ‘For us Saturn was an entire era and that’s without the slightest exaggeration. He saw many of us when we were children. We hope that we did not disappoint him.’
Saturn does have a rival to the claim of being the world’s oldest alligator – Muja, a resident of Belgrade Zoo in Serbia, could be as old as 85 – but he is certain to have outlived most of his peers in his native Mississippi – life expectancy of alligators in the wild there is between 30 and 50 years.
It is expected that Saturn will now be stuffed and put on display at Moscow’s museum of biology.
Rumours that Hitler, who collected animals, actually owned the alligator were just that according to experts.