Guinness World Records strips Bobi of oldest canine honor | EUROtoday

“Without any conclusive evidence available to us right now, we simply can’t retain Bobi as the record holder and honestly claim to maintain the high standards we set ourselves,” Mark McKinley, Guinness’s data director, stated within the assertion, a bit of greater than a month after the group opened “a formal review” into Bobi’s age.

Bobi, having lived his complete life in Leiria, Portugal, was a Rafeiro do Alentejo, a breed that sometimes guards livestock and lives between 12 and 14 years. The earlier Guinness file holder for oldest canine was Bluey, an Australian cattle canine that lived 29 years and 5 months earlier than dying in 1939. The new file prompted information tales around the globe.

Guinness wrote about Bobi once more in May to commemorate his alleged thirty first birthday. The group wrote an obituary of types when Bobi died in October, claiming that the canine had lived for 31 years and 165 days.

Questions surrounding Bobi’s age emerged quickly after his dying. In October, English veterinarian Danny Chambers, a council member for the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, instructed the Guardian that none of his colleagues believed Bobi was truly 31. He instructed the British newspaper that smaller breeds are sometimes the one canines that dwell into their late teenagers.

“Bobi’s reported age is equivalent to a human living over 200 years, which, given our current understanding of the aging process and medical capabilities, appears highly implausible,” Chambers wrote in an op-ed for the Skeptic, a nonprofit journal that analyzes “extraordinary claims” of bizarre phenomena.

In December, Wired reported {that a} Portuguese authorities pet database had data of Bobi’s proprietor registering him, however didn’t have proof that the canine was born in 1992.

In January, Guinness introduced that it was conducting the evaluation of Bobi’s title.

In a press release to the BBC on the time, Bobi’s proprietor, Leonel Costa, defended his late canine’s award, calling suspicions round his age “unfounded.”

“An elite within the veterinary world … tried to give people the idea that Bobi’s life story was not true,” Costa stated within the assertion.

In a press release to The Washington Post, Chambers stated final month that he felt for Costa, however that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and so far no concrete evidence has been supplied.”

On Thursday, Guinness stated that it agreed — there wasn’t proof Bobi had lived so long as Costa claimed. In an effort to confirm Bobi’s age for the unique file, Guinness stated it had relied on a microchip implanted by a Portuguese veterinary service and pet database approved by the nationwide authorities. But that group, the Sistema de Informação de Animais de Companhia, didn’t confirm Bobi’s date of delivery when he acquired the microchip in 2022, McKinley stated in a press release.

When Guinness introduced a 12 months in the past that Bobi had secured the file of oldest canine ever, it quoted Costa as saying that Bobi was by no means speculated to dwell past a couple of days. The pet and his littermates have been born in 1992, based on what Costa instructed Guinness on the time, on his household farm in Portugal in a constructing the place they saved wooden. Costa’s father euthanized the puppies after deciding that they already owned too many animals.

Unnoticed, Bobi escaped. He was quickly found by Costa, who was 8 on the time, based on Guinness. He and his brothers saved him a secret from their mother and father at first. Over time, Bobi grew to become a part of the household and wandered the farm, chowed on individuals meals and customarily loved a “calm peaceful environment … far from the cities” — all of which his proprietor credited for his lengthy life.

McKinley stated within the assertion that Guinness had not selected a brand new titleholder.

“We certainly hope that the publicity around the record title encourages pet owners from around the world to get in touch,” McKinley added.

Chambers, the veterinarian, stated that perhaps someday medical advances will enable canines to routinely dwell to 31. For now, he stated, a canine’s high quality of life is extra necessary than longevity.

“Dogs have no ambition to live a long time, they simply want to be happy and healthy on a day-to-day basis and enjoy the company of their owners,” he wrote in an e mail Friday.