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Posted on 04/05/2026 5:24:13 AM PDT by Libloather
The world's oldest land animal, Jonathan the tortoise, is still alive after a viral hoax falsely claimed he'd died.
The confusion began after a post on X falsely claimed the giant tortoise had died at age 193.
The account, which impersonated Jonathan’s veterinarian, Joe Hollins, quickly gained traction and sparked concern among fans around the world. That claim, however, was not true.
"Yes, he's still alive," the X user wrote hours later. "This was just an April Fools' prank."
**SNIP**
Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise, continues to live on the island of St. Helena, a remote British territory in the South Atlantic Ocean where he has spent most of his life, according to St. Helena's government website.
Jonathan is believed to have been born around 1832.
He was already considered an adult when he arrived on St. Helena in 1882, meaning he has lived through nearly two centuries of history.
Today, he holds the title of the world’s oldest living land animal, the island said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Some of us are still kickin’
193 year old turtle? How in heck do they know?
Almost old enough to have met Napoleon.
I love turtle soup. Served with a float of sherry and a lemon slice. Used to get that when my folks took me to Brennan’s in New Orleans lo these many decades ago.
The quahogs got it beat.
They must have documentation. Unless someone switched him out along the way, but he may have distinguishing characteristics. By now, I would think they’d have his DNA on record in case of questions.
If true, that’s astounding to me.
They checked back through all the birthday cards over the years, of course.
Happy Easter FRiend :)
Cut off his trunk and count the growth rings?
Cut off a leg and count the rings.
Being no. 1 is always an amazing feat. How to describe being no. 1 by lord-knows-how-much?
Darwin’s tortoise, Harriet, died at Steve Irwin’s zoo at about 175 in 2006. An even older tortoise died that year in India. There’s some question about whether Darwin actually collected Harriet himself, but she was one of three tortoises, Tom, Dick, and Harry, donated to a zoo by a Beagle captain. About a century later it was discovered that Harry was female (or maybe he transitioned) and became Harriet.
Drivers license or other photo ID.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu‘i_Malila
story about the tortoise do androids dream of electric sheep
https://search.brave.com/search?q=story+about+the+tortoise+do+androids+dream+of+electric+sheep&summary=1
The story of the tortoise, Tu’i Malila, appears as the opening epigraph in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), serving as a grim foreshadowing of the novel’s central theme regarding the scarcity of real life.
The epigraph is a Reuters news clip from 1966 reporting that Tu’i Malila, a nearly 200-year-old Tongan turtle gifted to the King of Tonga by Captain Cook in 1777, died at the Royal Palace in Nuku’alofa. The text highlights that the animal was regarded as a chief with special keepers, was blinded in a bush fire, and that its carcass would be sent to the Auckland Museum.
This real-world event sets the tone for the novel’s dystopian setting where real animals are extinct or extremely rare, making the ownership of a live sheep a status symbol and a source of deep empathy for the protagonist, Rick Deckard.
AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts.
By contrast, Jonathan the Hare died over 100 years ago.
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