It’s incredible to envision all the changes which have taken place over the last two hundred years. But imagine actually living through them. Like a living time capsule , there is one land-based animal residing on a remote South Atlantic island who could teach us a thing or two about our history: Meet Jonathan the tortoise, the world’s oldest living land animal.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records , Jonathan celebrated his 190th birthday in December 2022 from his home on the island of Saint Helena, 1,000 miles off the African coast. A Seychelles giant tortoise ( Aldabrachelys gigantea hololissa ), Jonathan is thought to have been born in 1832. Nevertheless, this is a conservative estimate. “To be honest, I suspect he’s older, but we can never know,” explained his vet in The Washington Post .
Although most members of his species live to around 150, Jonathan has overtaken Tu’I Malila, a radiated tortoise ( Astrochelys radiata ) owned by the royal family of Tonga who died at 188 years old in 1966. A dubious local legend claims Tu’I Malila was gifted to them in 1777 by Captain James Cook , remembered for achieving the first European contact with Australia, Hawaii and New Zealand.
What is known for sure is that in 1882 Jonathan the ancient tortoise was gifted to the then-governor of Saint Helena, a remote island brought under the British Crown in 1833 and best remembered for being the site where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled. Jonathan has been living at Plantation House, the…
