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For strange headline enthusiasts such as myself, last week gave us a real doozy in “World’s oldest tortoise caught in viral crypto death scam.”
The story in question concerned Jonathan, a famous tortoise believed to be 194 years old, whose death was announced by his veterinarian on the website formerly known as Twitter last week. Only, the “veterinarian” in question turned out to be an imposter, with an account based in Brazil, and he had apparently engineered the whole thing as an inspired ploy to collect donations in cryptocurrency. Who donates to the GoFundMe for a dead tortoise? In cryptocurrency, no less? Enough people to make it worthwhile, apparently.
No word on how much crypto the hoaxter actually managed to collect, but the (fake) story was soon picked up by the BBC, the Daily Mail and USA Today before Jonathan’s real vet, Joe Hollins, had a chance to correct the record.
Eventually, he (the real guy) told the Guardian:
“Jonathan the tortoise is very much alive. I believe on X the person purporting to be me is asking for crypto donations, so it’s not even an April fool joke. It’s a con.”
Hollins, like Jonathan, lives on the remote island of St. Helena, smack dab in the middle of the South Atlantic, not quite mid-way between Brazil and Angola, where Napoleon was once exiled and died, and where Jonathan is arguably still the biggest celebrity. He’s even on the money.
Nigel Phillips, the governor, was getting ready for bed on Wednesday night when he was inundated with anxious messages. He got up and searched the grounds to check on the tortoise. “Jonathan is asleep under a tree in the paddock,” he told the Guardian, adding that the animal was “very much alive”.
“Nigel Phillips,” perfect name for the governor of a small isolated island whose job duties include checking to see whether the famous tortoise is still alive. Shades of the Simpsons Australia episode (“Ahm gonna repoat this to me member uv pahlament. Oi! Gus!”).
In any case, that was more or less where the story ended — scam aborted, tortoise still alive, isolated island life carrying on — until I happened to be doing some research for Mad Yourself A Man and came across this article about Jonathan, from a 1965 issue of the Boston Globe:
As you can see, the article describes Jonathan as being 189 years old in 1965. This, again, on St. Helena, where Jonathan had lived, per the article, since Napoleon was exiled there in 1815. According to my math, that would put Jonathan’s birth year at 1776, making him a cool 250 years old today.
Researching further, I found another article (also, strangely, from the Boston Globe) from 2007, a longer travel piece about St. Helena, which also mentions Jonathan — this time describing him as about 50 when he arrived to the island in 1882 (well after Napoleon died, in 1821). That would make Jonathan 194 today, squaring with the more recent piece in the Guardian.
All of which raises the obvious question: which number is the correct one? Just how old is this damned tortoise, anyway? And if we can’t even be sure of his age, what else has he been hiding?
An additional wrinkle to this story is that Jonathan is one of an estimated 89 endangered Seychelles Giant Torti still living, and their life expectancy is only about 150 years. So however old Jonathan actually is, he is very old even relative to other tortwahsay.
In another fun little coincidence, I actually had some sources on the island of St. Helena, well placed to answer just such a query (this thanks to a weird little article about the Napoleon movie I wrote for GQ a few years back). My contact for that, Susan O’Bey, the since-retired Chief Secretary of St. Helena, was thankfully able to respond right away.
O’Bey reckons that the 1965 article probably mistook Jonathan for a different giant tortoise who was on the island alongside the little Corsican in 1815-1821. She goes on to site Quincentenary: A Story of St Helena, 1502-2002, by David L. Smallman (which may be related to O’Bey’s hobby of restoring old books).
“Smallman states that there were two giant tortoises here earlier than Jonathan’s arrival, and possibly during the time of Napoleon. One died in 1877 (its carapace is in the Natural History Museum in London). The other died in 1918 when it fell over a cliff. Both these came from Mauritius,” O’Bey writes.
She adds, “I actually think (my theory) that Jonathan was brought over to replace the tortoise that died in 1877.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for obscure tortoise anecdotes. Give me all of them. On that note, I was also able to get in touch with Andrew Cant, St. Helena’s Senior Veterinary Officer, for additional confirmation.
For his part, Cant writes:
Yes lots of theories as to how old Jonathan might be!
However, we think he is at least 194 years old.
This is based on a letter dated 1894 between the then Governor and a sea captain stating Jonathan arrived on St Helena in 1882.
There is a then a photograph thought to be taken a few years after 1882 that shows Jonathan (identified by the shape of his shell scutes) at Plantation House. Going by his size in that photograph he is thought to be fully grown which takes around 50 years. So that would have him hatching out in 1832 or before.
It is on that basis that he has been aged, and justifies his claim to be the oldest known living land animal in the Guinness Book of Records.
Again, wonderful stuff. Did you know that “scute” was a word? I sure didn’t, but I’ll be adding it to my Wordle repertwah.
Meanwhile, thanks to Jonathan’s surprisingly thorough and charmingly anachronistic info page (another tip from O’Bey), I was able to work out what seems like a fairly convincing basis for Jonathan the Tortoise’s age discrepancy.
…it should be noted that other, contradictory, information exists. Governor Gallwey, writing some time after his term ended in the Journal of the Royal African Society, July, 1941, says:
Two very interesting inmates of the Island, who lived in Government House grounds, were a couple of giant tortoises, weighing about 800 lbs. apiece. They had been presented to the Governor of the Island by the master of a sailing vessel in 1776, and were both going strong when I left the Island in 1911. They would walk away with the heaviest man on their backs without showing any signs of either disapproval or inconvenience [emphasis mine]. When I arrived in St Helena these two old inhabitants had been at Plantation for 126 years. What age they were when they first arrived, I do not know. One died a few years ago, but I am under the impression that one still exists. The couple, male and female, never raised a family.
If this were correct then Jonathan, the only survivor in 1941, would have been hatched before 1776, at least 250 years ago, and could indeed have met Napoleon. Sadly, we think this unlikely and suspect either that Governor Gallwey was misinformed or his memory of what he was told was inaccurate.
Wow, another great anecdote. Leave it to a colonial English governor to just be like, “Ooh, a giant tortoise. Such a majestic creature. I shall now find the heaviest man upon the island to clamber upon its back so that I might study its facial expression for signs of disapproval or convenience and write about it in mine journal. Oi, Gus!”
In any case, the official Helenian line seems to be that Governor Gallwey was simply mistaken. Perhaps we should see what his deal was to help us decide how much stock to put in his theories:
Henry Lionel Gallwey, 2nd February 1903 - 1912: Agreed to accept the Zulu Poll Tax Prisoners ⋅ Opened the Golf Club ⋅ Worked with Mr. Alfred Mosely to improve the island’s economy (unsuccessfully) ⋅ Frequently expressed frustration at the ‘laid back’ attitude of the islanders ⋅ Arranged the planting of many trees, to replace those cut down for fuel during the stay of the Boer PoWs, but most were eaten by goats ⋅ Tried to stamp out superstition.
Attempt to improve the island’s economy? Unsuccessful. Attempt to stamp out superstition? Outcome unclear. None of my St. Helena contacts have described anything superstitious, so at worst I believe we can say that Gov. Gallwey was ahead of his time.
Sorry, just one more Jonathan anecdote:
In his (slightly) younger days, Jonathan was a lot more lively, and regularly escaped from his enclosure.
According to a newspaper report from 1969, his behaviour was attributed to loneliness. The report (in the ‘Reading Eagle’, 11th August 1969) says that Jonathan had started causing trouble - disrupting croquet games by sitting on the balls and upending the benches by the tennis courts at Plantation House. So Governor Dermod Murphy requested a mate from Mahe in the Seychelles and Emma and David were sent here to keep him company - we got two for the price of one! [Jonathan’s Info Page]
Based on the preponderance of evidence, it seems likely that Jonathan is closer to 194 years old than he is to 250, though even the best estimators admit that no one can know for certain.
Either way, he seems to be a marvel of science. The website goes on to note that Jonathan’s DNA is even being studied for its potential cancer-curing properties. Meanwhile, not only has he outlived his life expectancy by at least 44 years, he’s still sexually active:
Despite being blind from cataracts and having lost his sense of smell, Jonathan remains hale and hearty with a strong appetite for bananas and a healthy libido – he tries to mate with two younger tortoises who also reside on the governor’s property. [Guardian]
Still virile at age 194, an example to us all.
Jonathan’s attempts to mate also raise the intriguing possibility of breeding an army of giant tortoises, that the islanders of St. Helena might ride to each other’s houses like sluggish but affable Segways. Sadly, such a future turns out not to be feasible, and for a surprising reason: Jonathan is not only probably sterile, but possibly homosexual.
From Daily Mail, 2017:
Vets decided [Jonathan] needed a girlfriend and in 1991 he was given a mate.
Romance blossomed with Frederica and it wasn’t long before the couple began enjoying regular mating sessions every Sunday morning, The Times reported.
But despite their amorous antics, the pair never had any young. Now, almost three decades after the romance began, the reason has been revealed.
When vets went to repair a lesion on the tortoise’s shell it was discovered that Frederica was actually a Frederic. [Editor’s note: This next bit is their transition, not mine]
A bill was introduced last year to allow same-sex marriage on the island, which has a population of 4,255, but it was withdrawn after local outrage.
Consultations are being held across the island to canvass opinion on whether a bill should be presented to the council before a court case that is set to challenge the current law on discrimination grounds.
I am pleased to report that the island St. Helena went on to approve same-sex marriage by a 9-2 vote later that same year, no doubt thanks to Jonathan and Frederic setting such a positive example for healthy, same-sex relationships.
Whether he knew that he was in one is harder to say. Tortoises mate by smell, and as Jonathan has lost his, it seems that has been rendered biologically incapable of smelling what The Rock is cooking, so to speak. That it doesn’t stop him from trying, even at whatever age he is… again, admirable.
In any case, in these troubled times, this was all a very enjoyable journey for me to go on, and if you’re still reading this I hope you enjoyed me bringing you along. I’ll end it by inviting you all to join me in the fervent hope that the gay old tortoise who taught a tiny island tolerance may one day cure cancer for us all.
Also, I thought Jonathan could use his own NFL memes-style graphic, and so I tried to get Chat GPT to do it, but it said that would violate its terms of service, and so I spent a good 45 minutes of my morning making this:
Worth every second.
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