The three-legged tortoise with wheels who's travelled half the globe

It's a travel itinerary to bring tears of envy to the eyes of grounded Hongkongers: An exotic nature reserve in Madagascar followed by a boat trip across the Indian Ocean to the tropical Comoros Islands, then a journey from Addis Ababa to Hong Kong with a stopover in the Middle East, and finally a one-way flight from Hong Kong to the UK.

But for Shelley , international travel was the stuff of nightmares rather than dreams. She was snatched from her territory in a remote corner of Madagascar, smuggled by boat and plane to Ethiopia, then wrapped in plastic tape and flown to Hong Kong crammed inside a suitcase with 56 other rare tortoises.

Those 43 animals account for almost half the 88 ploughshare tortoises currently known of outside their native Madagascar — and the reason they all turned up in Hong Kong was to feed an insatiable demand for rare breeds in mainland China. "If you can show somebody you have the rarest tortoise and you are proud because you spent US$50,000 buying it, that gives street cred to the rich guy," Crow says. "He can keep it in his garden, next to his Bentley and his Ferrari."

"We've had a campaign over the past couple of years to try to raise awareness with the government and the public to show we have a critical role here in Hong Kong, and if we can stop things coming through Hong Kong and give people huge fines and long prison sentences, we can at least try to curb Hong Kong's role [in the wildlife trade].

"This one isn't even a teenager yet and is still at the point where it's almost impossible to tell," Crow explains. "We can make a guess and we think it may be a female but we could be proven wrong. You look at things like the tail size and shape and length. Male tortoises keep their hemi-penis tucked within the tail."

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