A dog has been posthumously stripped of its title as the world’s oldest canine after a dispute about its real age.
Guinness World Records (GWR) has said that it had no evidence that Bobi the dog was as old as it had been claimed.
Bobi, a purebred rafeiro do Alentejo, died last October at the reported age of 31 years and 165 days. The breed typically lives 12 to 14 years.
The organisation said that the microchip which had claimed to prove Bobi’s age was not sufficient proof to give him the title, which had been awarded in February last year.
Bobi lived on a farm in the village of Conqueiros in Portugal with his owner and four cats.
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The GWR said that it had not determined which dog was the new record holder. It launched an investigation into Bobi last month after doubts were raised about the reliability of the evidence used to prove the dog’s age.
GWR said: “We’re left with no conclusive evidence which can definitively prove Bobi’s date of birth.
“Without any conclusive evidence available to us right now, we simply can’t retain Bobi as the record holder.”
Bobi’s owner has not commented on the dog’s title being removed, but has previously said that the suspicions over his dog’s true age were “unfounded”.
He had previously claimed that Bobi’s longevity was down to his laid-back life in the Portuguese countryside and a decision to only ever feed him “human food”.
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However an investigation by Wired magazine found that Bobi’s microchip had only been registered in 2022, a year before he died. His owner had claimed that he had been born in 1992, but a database official had explained that it had “no registration or data that can confirm or deny this statement”.
Last month Danny Chambers of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons told The Guardian that “not a single one” of his vet colleagues believed that the dog actually lived to 31.
The previous oldest dog ever was Australia’s Bluey, who died in 1939 at the age of 29 years and five months.
The oldest living land animal recorded by the GWR is Johnathan, the 191-year-old tortoise, which is believed to have been born in 1832.
