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Jonathan the 190-Year-Old Tortoise Was Photographed in 1886 and Today
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoWhile Jonathan was alive Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, Samuel Morse received the patent for the telegraph, Beau Brummell died and Oliver Wendell Holmes was born. Jonathan is older than Canada and Hong Kong.
- JackFr 5y agoTo paraphrase a meme that went around a few years ago, "Jonathon was alive during slavery, and did nothing!"
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoBe fair - Jonathan never owned a slave! His conscience is clear. From the description, it seems he's spent a life eating lettuces and bonking. Not a bad 190 years.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rob74 5y agoI would slightly correct the statement in the article: "The World’s Oldest [Known] Land Animal Ever". But after reading through it, I'm afraid that animals living in the wild (which are not fed and cared for) probably wouldn't reach this age, so the statement may actually be correct...
- mfer 5y agoIt's the oldest known land animal in modern times. For example, a tortoise could have lived a couple thousand years ago and lived a couple hundred years. The people of that time may have known about it over the generations. Yet, we today have no record. "ever" is said a lot but it's hard to substantiate.
- moron4hire 5y ago"That we know of" is implicit.
- TremendousJudge 5y agoexplicit is better than implicit
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- moron4hire 5y agoJesus Christ, this Hyper Text Markup Language page served via the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol over a Transmission Control Protocol connection can be so tiring sometimes.
- toss1 5y agoOf course you want to explicitly initialize all your variables and specify contexts in a programming language. In a natural language, implicit and contextual cues are often more important (and can be lost in low bandwidth communication media like this).
- setgree 5y agoAn article can be as high-bandwidth as it needs to be to communicate clearly... When I read > He turns 190 years old this year, making him the world’s oldest tortoise to ever live I don't hear an implicit "known" in that. I hear a claim about Jonathan's being the oldest tortoise to ever live, and we have no idea if that's true.
- toss1 5y agoNice example of where it is lost in lower context environments. Most people probably just take it at face value, or read it as implied in the limitations of the medium. I passingly notice the discrepancy but disregard it as unimportant in this context. You seem to deeply notice the discrepancy and complain that it isn't fixed every time, preferring always verbose precision over brevity. In a live-in-person context, it'd be easily handled in seconds of conversation or just body language and intonation. That's all lost here.
- samatman 5y agoThe Testudine lineage is more than 200 million years old. I'm confident that some tortoise, somewhere, lived in isolated splendour longer than Jonathan. It's just a numbers game, holding 190 up against 200 million and squinting a bit. Not to take anything away from the old fellow! He's earned his laurels.
- 3836293648 5y agoThey even mentioned a 250 y.o. (nwow dead) Tortoise in the article
- mushbino 5y agoNo, the other tortoise mentioned lived to 188.
- colanderman 5y agoThere is a 3rd tortoise mentioned supposed to have lived 255 years old whose age was however unconfirmed.
- nesky 5y agoHas any research been produced around animals in general that live this long? IE: what about their genetics/life encourages this longevity?
- melling 5y agoHumans seem to have a lifespan of around 100. 2000 years ago people lived into their 90’s, and a few even made it to 100. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc... Modern medicine should be able to get more people into their 90’s but we’ll need to do a bit of research to get us to 150, for instance.
- Tenoke 5y agoWe do seem to have a hard cap of around 120 which basically hasn't moved - we are just bringing the averages closer to it. I'm optimistic we'll go past it but not without some advances on a different level of everything so far.
- vidarh 5y agoI think we have too few people still approaching 120 to know whether that apparent cap is more than "just" the combination of the risk of multiple mortality causes all getting high enough to make it unlikely. Knock out or reduce a couple of the big ones, and we'll get an idea. It's likely there are other limits. Eg. Telomere shortening, but I don't think we can say we're hitting other limits at 120
- mschuster91 5y ago> but we’ll need to do a bit of research to get us to 150, for instance Indeed, but we could additionally to research also do something against the most common causes of (early) death - the more people live longer, the higher the chance is that one of those who has not suffered a preventable death is the one that lives to be 150 years. And there's a lot that we can easily tackle at relatively low cost compared to the gains (both in productivity and years-lived): incentivize people to quit or reduce alcohol and tobacco consumption, make high quality food affordable and accessible to everyone (=combat "food deserts"), reduce working hours in a first step towards 40 hours and then 30 or even 20 hours, reduce commute times, mandate vaccinations for everything that Army soldiers get across the population, increase access to cancer awareness programs and to first-class physical and mental healthcare so that cancer and other illnesses can get detected and treated early enough...
- coldcode 5y agoWonder if he remembers anything from when he was young, if that's even possible for a tortoise.
- boringg 5y agoI'm curious how their brains lay down memories. I would imagine he probably does as I don't think there is a huge variation in content to be honest...
- me_me_me 5y agoSome humans are capable of recalling every detail of their lives. That is an incredible amount of information that a human brain can store. I don't suppose a 200yrs 'ordinary' old human would run into any problems with memory storage.
- zzt123 5y agoThat is entirely not true - no one remembers every detail of their life. As for the ones who do, you can do a fairly good impression thereof by simulating reliable synesthetic associations.
- seibelj 5y agoI don't remember every single detail, but I have clear memories from before I could walk, like watching Wizard of Oz on VHS and not being able to walk away even though I was tired of watching it. My wife says she doesn't remember anything before about age 5.
- boringg 5y agoI think that for the case of the Turtle - early childhood memories would actually have a larger impression as everything about them is new making them have a bigger imprint where as there mid 80s - 150s range is probably one giant blur of repetition. Imagine being a software developer for 200 years? Oof you would be such a crank/skeptic having to deal with all the tech changeover
- perihelions 5y agoImagine living so long you have photographs of yourself whose copyright terms expired. Would Wikipedia be allowed to use those without permission?
- moron4hire 5y agoYes, that's rather much the point of copyright expiration.
- colejohnson66 5y agoWith the life+70 system we have now, it would be physically impossible for photos taken today to go public domain before said person dies. "Works for hire", OTOH, are 95 years from publication or 120 from creation (whichever expires first). With those, it is theoretically possible that a photo of a toddler would go public domain before they die.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoThe photographer and not the subject is the owner of the copyright. So life+70 it would be with regards to the photographer. So if a grandparent photographed their baby grandchild and died shortly afterward, when the grandchild was in their 70’s the photo would enter the public domain.
- colejohnson66 5y agoTrue. I forgot about that fact and was thinking as if the child owned the copyright somehow
- kwhitefoot 5y agoWhy isn't it work for hire? Assuming a professional photographer rather than a family snapshot of course.
- zuminator 5y agoI guess one could always try to sue to get your embarrassing baby photos redacted from publication. Oh, it's been tried before and failed? Nevermind.
- rkk3 5y agoJonathan was born on St Helena, ~10 years after the death of Emperor Napoleon on that island. Re-incarnation?
- theandrewbailey 5y agoJonathan was probably not born on St Helena, since he was a gift from elsewhere.
- rkk3 5y agoTotally right, he did arrive on St Helena 40-50 years into his life! Just like someone else did.
- gonzo41 5y agoNapoleon wouldn't be that lucky.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoAre tortoises born, or hatched?
- blackboxlogic 5y agoAnd do they celebrate his hatchday with a hatchday cake?
- lordnacho 5y agoBoth surely, egg comes out of mom, baby comes out of egg. Pretty good as long as one of the days isn't Christmas.
- avgcorrection 5y agoIn what belief system does rebirth depend on spatiality?
- daveslash 5y agoAt 190, he was born in 1832. Some of the oldest photographs of anything are from the late 1830's. If you stretch your definition of photography, you could argue the oldest photos are from the 1820s. But for most intents and purposes, this tortoise is older than all photographs in the world, of anything, ever.
- mc32 5y agoNote that the photo is from when it arrived in St Helena in 1886, not when it was presumed to have been born in 1832. However your point that it is older than photo technology stands.
- CPLX 5y agoSo what do they have that we don't have?
- UntitledNo4 5y agoSex with Emma and Fred
- scroot 5y agoI met Jonathan in 2016. AMA.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoWhat did he tell you when you met?
- aynyc 5y agoHey, you look exactly like your great great great great great grandfather!
- tsol 5y agoJust imagine the things he's lived through. I hope you talked to him a long time
- scroot 5y agoHe was busy eating, which is apparently what he does most of the time. Relaxing to watch.
- leokennis 5y agoMeanwhile, this shark has been swimming around the Atlantic since 1627: https://www.captain-planet.net/uploads/2018/10/67241603_362186541125894_5812555219371819008_n-1.jpg https://www.captain-planet.net/uploads/2018/10/67241603_3621... ~~Kids~~ Tortoises these days... https://www.captain-planet.net/400-year-old-shark-found-in-the-arctic-could-be-the-oldest-living-vertebrate/ https://www.captain-planet.net/400-year-old-shark-found-in-t...
- Vetch 5y agoWithout reading the article my guess is it's a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark#Longevity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark#Longevity They're estimated to live between 250 and 500 years.
- elb2020 5y ago"These sharks have an estimated lifespan of 400 years and they spend their time swimming around looking for mates." I will not complain about my own 50 year search, then.
- kazinator 5y ago"looking for mates" is nautical language; when first or second mates are unavailable, they will eat the usually older captains, too.
- tsol 5y agoTo be fair Greenland sharks reach sexual maturity at 150 years old. So you know, their awkward teen years are probably longer too. Just imagine having to listening to angsty rock music for 80 years
- dennis_jeeves 5y ago
- pvaldes 5y agoNot necessarily. We had explained here yet why this age value is just an estimate that can miss for a mile.
- ck2 5y agoI wonder if the life-extension (longevity) researchers have studied tortoises, probably? But not mammals and "cold blooded" (ectothermic) so they are probably too different to be helpful.
- me_me_me 5y agoImagine living that long, that would be some experience witnessing world go faster and faster with each decade. You'd literally experience steam power industrialisation progressing all the way to information tech era. That would give you some incredible perspective.
- yitchelle 5y agoThis blog (0) - "The Oldest Living Things in the world" has a incredible old organisms. Although not mobile like Jonathan, the trees and moss are really old. Some are 12,000 years old. Still Amazing. (0) - http://oltw.blogspot.com/ http://oltw.blogspot.com/
- kazinator 5y agoLooks good! Hasn't aged a bit since 1886. Same sized shell still fits.
- avalys 5y agoSomeone once told me that the finite human lifetime is not a constraint of physics or biology, but evolution. The fact that older organisms decay and die gives an opportunity for new organisms (potentially, with superior genes) to thrive. If there was no finite lifetime, then the benefit of physical maturity would allow older organisms to perpetually outcompete the younger ones, reducing the rate of genetic adaptation and the fitness of species overall. Does anyone with specific knowledge know if this is true? If so, it's a little bit depressing to think that aging is simply a programmed biological process, "deliberately" degrading our bodies on a schedule and killing us off to make room for something new, rather than any sort of fundamental limitation of the underlying system.
- avgcorrection 5y agoOn the other hand it means that there are some benefits which are correlated with age or else this mechanism wouldn’t be necessary. Our culture mostly looks on old age with disdain. And indeed not just old age but any kind of aging past 25. And to be sure there are many objective downsides to being old compared to young. However one does also have the opportunity to attain knowledge and wisdom as one gets older. And that can continue until one starts to become senile, which might only start in very advanced years for many or most people!
- anderspitman 5y agoEven though they're more athletic in their early twenties, most basketball players seem to peak around 27-29, I assume because of the intersection of athleticism and skill gained from experience.
- dahart 5y agoSee how Wikipedia describes it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing#Ageing_versus_immortality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing#Ageing_versus_immortali... If very process of sexual reproduction that brought humans into existence is entangled with the process of aging, there is probably no reason to think that humans (or any species that reproduces sexually) could somehow change or evolve to become immortal.
- mleonhard 5y agoI wonder if their long lifespan is an adaptation to take advantage of some extremely rare event that benefits their reproduction. For example, perhaps their eggs are usually eaten by a kind of crab. But once every 50 years there is a a massive hurricane that decimates the crab population. In the following spawning season, nearly all of the eggs hatch. The 150 year lifespan allows them to participate in 2-3 of these rare spawning seasons. Since the event is rare, scientists get few chances to notice it.
- Jansen312 5y agoI think they can do simulation and then map result against actual observations. This would be very similar to "climate science" now (albeit at a smaller scale) where a lot of conclusions are done via projections of years in advances within their simulated earths.
- sexy_seedbox 5y agoHe just might live long enough to see all 3 World Wars!