Henry the tuatara: A love story

While there are few that would argue that we have a shortage of romantic novels, one segment of the world's population would probably make just that argument: those who want to read romantic stories about reptiles. There are plenty of stories out there about reptiles. For an example take Edgar Rice Burroughs' series about Pellucidar, the world at the earth's core. Reptiles feature prominently in these tales of the perils of prehistoric earth, but very rarely in a positive light. The dominant race when our protagonist arrives in Pellucidar is a race of reptiles called Lahars. They don't even have the chance for romance as they killed off the males of their species long ago and reproduce through some unspecified asexual means. Most of the other reptiles do not even have any emotion or intelligence ascribed to them.

We are very pleased, then, to inform you of a real-life reptilian love story playing out in New Zealand right now. Henry the tuatara was unable to maintain any sort of positive relationship with any of the female tuataras that the zookeepers introduced to him until he had a tumor removed from his bottom. Something about this operation (the scientists would probably say it allowed his bodily systems to return to normal, but the romantics know that it had to do with Henry finally sensing his own mortality) caused him to no longer lash out at female companionship, and at the age of 111 Henry finally became a father! At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased that Henry has overcome his fear of commitment!