'Jonathan' is the oldest land animal on Earth

(404media.co)

202 points | by gumby 18 hours ago

26 comments

  • thelastgallon 5 hours ago
    We don’t need to cure death. Just hair loss and old skin, it will create $50T market cap in new companies.
    • Meleagris 3 hours ago
      I’m actually more interested in hair removal. There should be better methods than what we have now.

      If I’m going bald, then I’d love to shortcut the process.

      Shaving is awful no matter where it is on your body. It takes time, it’s irritating and you never look fresh for more than a day.

      • Larrikin 1 hour ago
        Isn't this solved with laser hair removal?
        • acidx 57 minutes ago
          Laser hair removal only works if there's contrast between the skin and the hair. So if you have white or blonde hair and white skin, it doesn't work; or if you have brown skin and brown hair, it also doesn't work.

          For cases where laser hair removal won't work, there's electrolysis, which involves inserting an acupuncture needle in each and every hair follicle, but it's expensive, slow, and can be pretty painful.

        • red-iron-pine 15 minutes ago
          mostly, but not always, and it's harder if there is less contrast between hair color and skin color.
        • jghn 1 hour ago
          Sort of. It's often not perfect, and often not permanent.
      • jester997 1 hour ago
        Just grow a scraggly and comb it down. Venture capitalists wear t-shirts that show their nipples on stage, so what’s the shame in a long scraggly.
    • pelagicAustral 4 hours ago
      The hair one is a fascinating one to me... We have some many examples of people like Bezos, Jobs, Ballmer, Brin, Slim... I mean, if the ultra rich have not figured it out, I don't think there much hope for anyone else really... haha of they can pull a Musk, but that's not the point, the point is to reverse balding...
      • johnwalkr 1 hour ago
        It's not what you meant but toupees have gotten really good, the only problem is you can't be a public figure and have pattern baldness one day and a full head of hair the next. There's actually something called "the toupee fallacy" which means assuming an entire category of something is bad based on only noticing bad examples.
      • tencentshill 21 minutes ago
        Trump, the most vain of them all, has tried pretty much every way for the last 40 years. It's likely mostly glue at this point.
      • lifestyleguru 4 hours ago
        > can pull a Musk, but that's not the point, the point is to reverse balding

        How much such hairline can cost, $10?

        • pelagicAustral 3 hours ago
          nah, but I mean, the guy went trough the same instant pipeline as Steven Seagal where he was definitely all thin in Above the Law and a film later his hairline had won the battle. Come on!
  • Zizizizz 3 hours ago
    Reminds me of one of my favourite SNL sketches: https://youtu.be/kq8Xlbb3bOw?is=ymUnd9aG6B1kE_NJ
  • pythonRon 4 hours ago
    The goal is to lengthen human lifespan? Like the planet doesn't have enough humans already.
    • uiautrb 4 hours ago
      The problem is not with the number of human but with our lifestyle...
      • jhbadger 2 hours ago
        It's both, though. Yes, the Earth can support more humans with a lifestyle closer to that of the West in the 19th century than with a lifestyle closer to the the West in the 21st, but even in the 19th (and earlier) deforestation and the like were happening. And it's just reality that as societies prosper they use more resources per person. 50 years ago the vast majority of Chinese didn't use cars but walked and and bicycled. Now they are quite car dependent.
      • _heimdall 2 hours ago
        I'm not sure that's an easy argument to hold up. Where would you draw the line on lifestyle that can and should reasonably change?

        We've populated large portions of the planet that we really have no business living in without climate controlled indoor environments. HVAC is also a huge energy suck with all the externalities that come along with it. If we were to really want to cut energy use, for example, and climate control had to go we almost certainly couldn't continue to sustain as many people as we have today.

    • tokai 3 hours ago
      Wake up grandpa, human population is on the cusp of beginning to decline.
      • nancyminusone 0 minutes ago
        "on the cusp of beginning to"

        This will happen no earlier than the 2080s. The world population is expected to increase every year until then. We will add nearly 2 billion people in that time. Consider that the entire world population was less than 1 billion for all but the last 221 years.

        I continue to not worry.

      • dirkc 2 hours ago
        Wouldn't a decline be good? Or is the theory that we can only do collapse, not decline?
        • Tade0 2 hours ago
          Depends how it's done I guess. France has a decent population tower, for lack of a better expression:

          https://www.populationpyramid.net/france/2026/

          If they keep it up, their population will remain stable up to the 22nd century. There will be no further noticeable ageing and thus no threat to anyone's retirement.

      • close04 2 hours ago
        > Wake up grandpa

        Just imagine how many more grandpas and great grandpas will be around for you to shout this at.

        The problem with the population isn't (yet? only?) the absolute number of individuals but the age distribution. Most societies rely on young people to support themselves and the old, and this only works if there's a good balance between the numbers of each. Living longer isn't guaranteed to offer a longer productive period. We might just end up with more old people in need of support and not necessarily more children. This is already a major problem today in most developed countries.

        There are probably so many more factors to consider. Like the psychological impact of living substantially longer. Even things like that crappy boss who won't retire from another 60 years, the dictator who won't die for another hundred years, or any number of the many society destroying tech CEOs getting to entrench themselves for decades more.

    • smallstepforman 3 hours ago
      Well, they dont want more for you, but more for “them”.
  • throwaway2046 11 hours ago
  • scun 14 hours ago
    > The results revealed that Jonathan has “unique gene variants in most aging pathways” including DNA repair, insulin regulation, mitochondrial function, and “low entropy” methylation, reports the study.

    min-maxing longevity vs speed and charisma

    • luipugs 13 hours ago
      I dunno, I think he's pretty charismatic. He has all these researchers wanting to spend time with him.
      • scun 12 hours ago
        Sure but biologists will talk to anything. You know what happened to the other tortoises? Bored to death.
      • SwtCyber 7 hours ago
        He's basically been networking for 194 years without ever leaving the garden
      • PalmPilotProMax 10 hours ago
        Yeah, but is he more charismatic than Bryan Johnson?

        Wait till he gets his hands on turtle semen and peptides

        • ElProlactin 5 hours ago
          My supplement company has a product, PeptiShell Vital Peak, that has been selling in volume to a mystery buyer for the past few months. Things that make you go hmmm.
      • DrMandalay 8 hours ago
        The oldest gay tortoise there is. You can hear the grunts when he and Frederick are fucking from the other side of the valley.
    • SwtCyber 7 hours ago
      To be fair, he's had 194 years to work on his charisma. At this point it's a choice
    • kspacewalk2 10 hours ago
      The hare really ought to take notes
  • usernametaken29 9 hours ago
    Hell yeah I’m down to become a turtle. Lay by the beach. Eat kelp. Awesome
    • ElProlactin 5 hours ago
      You can already do that in Bali without tortoise conversion therapy.
    • 1659447091 4 hours ago
    • saidnooneever 7 hours ago
      it kinda looks like he was taken from his home as a toddler and put in jail for like... 180 years or so?. very romantic indeed.
  • m4tthumphrey 30 minutes ago
    No one wants to live forever. Except maybe Trump, Musk and co
  • frereubu 7 hours ago
    No point staying alive if you're not healthy. This is a great podcast about the difference between lifespan and healthspan: "To start our new series about what it means to live in a world of ageing populations, David talks to geneticist Adam Rutherford about the benefits and pitfalls of increasing longevity. Are GLP-1s – drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro – miracle cures that will extend human lifespans? What happens if longer lives do not coincide with better health? How far can life extension be pushed? And who wants to live forever anyway?" https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/an-ageing-world-lifespan-v...
    • dataflow 6 hours ago
      > No point staying alive if you're not healthy.

      Maybe not for you, but others would beg to differ?

      Darwin apparently had debilitating illnesses at 72 (one year before his death) when he published a book on earthworms and their role in forming soil. And Pasteur was apparently paralyzed at 63 when he developed the rabies vaccine. Etc.

      Should they have just kicked the bucket when they lost their health, because of the pointlessness of living past that?

      • frereubu 1 hour ago
        That's an uncharitable reading of what I mean, but I suppose I could have been clearer. Perhaps "no point staying alive if you're so unhealthy that you're perpetually miserable" would be closer to what I meant, particularly having seen a number of elderly relatives living through their last years in unrelenting misery, impatient for death. One in particular sticks with me, an uncle who had been a doctor and knew exactly what was coming because he'd seen plenty of it in his career, but without the means to end it in a dignified way. These people absolutely didn't want to be kept alive longer - which is the point of the distinction between lifespan and healthspan in the podcast.
      • _heimdall 2 hours ago
        A bit more charitable read on the GP is that people should focus on having as many healthy days as possible rather than as many total days as possible.

        That doesn't mean those already I'll should just give up, it means those looking to their future should consider whether living 20 more healthy years is better than living 40 more years if 30 of those are increasingly focused on just treating symptoms to wake up tomorrow.

      • lifestyleguru 3 hours ago
        Chopin had tuberculosis most of his life and died at 39 weighing only 45kg. Euler became almost blind before 60. Give a chance to sick and feeble, folks.
    • varjag 6 hours ago
      Luxury problems.
  • totetsu 12 hours ago
    Why was the us space force involved?
    • gumby 12 hours ago
      He has a pm unusually large volume and has been around an unusually long time and they are the group responsible for anomalies in space-time.
    • poooogles 6 hours ago
      I'd guess that the samples got flown through RAF Ascension Island which the Space Force operate at.
  • dyauspitr 13 hours ago
    Interesting so the oldest land animal hasn’t cracked 200 but stuff that lives in the sea can go for five or 600 years or more.
    • SwtCyber 7 hours ago
      Apparently the secret to living 500 years is to move somewhere cold, avoid sunlight, and never be in a hurry
      • red-iron-pine 13 minutes ago
        I do IT, poorly, in a basement in Canada. I will live to 500.
      • TiredOfLife 4 hours ago
        But what if I already live somewhere cold, avoid sunlight and am never in a hurry?
        • lifestyleguru 4 hours ago
          If you are a human this will make you a depressed alcoholic.
          • TiredOfLife 1 hour ago
            I also don't drink
            • _zoltan_ 1 hour ago
              Cold, no sun AND no alcohol? Man that must suck. :)
    • adrian_b 4 hours ago
      This is the oldest land animal currently living and whose age is known with certainty.

      It is believed that other tortoises may have lived close to 300 years.

      The greater age reached by animals living in an environment that is cold and with a constant temperature and which need a much lower average power for living (i.e. a lower energy consumption and a slower metabolism) is very much expected.

    • mrheosuper 11 hours ago
      Maybe leaving the water is a mistake...
      • bmitc 11 hours ago
        Whales seemed to have figured that out.
        • altmanaltman 8 hours ago
          I mean their ancestor was a land mamal that decided to go live in water so they kind of did figure it out.
          • bmitc 39 minutes ago
            That's the point ...
    • epolanski 13 hours ago
      There's sharks out there that are much older than the United States.

      And sponges older than pyramids.

      • loloquwowndueo 12 hours ago
        Older than the United States hahaha.

        Remember the saying : in the US, 100 years is a long time; in Europe, 100km is a long distance.

        • rootusrootus 11 hours ago
          How pedantic can we be? There are a number of countries in Europe younger than the United States...
          • vidarh 5 hours ago
            But far fewer than modern nation states that are younger. E.g. Norway as a modern nation state is typically dated to either 1814 (constitution), or 1905 (independence), but the country is considered to have been united between 872 and ~1130 depending on exactly how consolidated control you're willing to count.
          • otherme123 8 hours ago
            And we europeans consider them young. What we are pointing is that people in US (and America in general) talks about pre-1776 stuff as they were prehistoric, and pre-1900 stuff as they were comparable to Roman ruins. Add to that that we love to bomb each other to a ruble, and buildings and countries younger than 200 years are viewed as temporary stuff. Nothing pedantic or snobby here, just pointing that we live in different scenarios that affected our views.
          • skrebbel 8 hours ago
            It’s more like US people look at a couple 100yo buildings and say stuff like “wow this place has a lot of history!”
            • lifestyleguru 3 hours ago
              > It’s more like US people look at a couple 100yo buildings and say stuff like “wow this place has a lot of history!”

              You are overgeneralizing. In much of Europe plenty of architecture was erected after 1945, and most of architecture around and after 1900.

              • pablobaz 2 hours ago
                Or the New River in London - an artificial waterway opened in 1613.
              • loloquwowndueo 2 hours ago
                And then you have things like the “new bridge” in Paris which is 420 years old.
        • autoexec 11 hours ago
          It's still pretty long in the US. Over an hour by car, and even for people who bicycle regularly riding a century is no joke.
          • rootusrootus 11 hours ago
            By that same sort of metric, 100 years is a long time in Europe, too. Not too many people live that long.
        • epolanski 4 hours ago
          Didn't expect folks to take a fact statement as an attack.

          The point was to emphasize the longevity of some animals, as for us humans the US constitution is 8/9 generations away.

        • tick_tock_tick 11 hours ago
          Isn't the USA older then pretty much every country in Europe? Maybe the UK could be considered older depending on how you count it and San Marino is there but all the other major ones like Germany, Italy, France, Spain, etc aren't even 100.
          • Scandiravian 10 hours ago
            How in the world can you claim that France is not even 100? The German empire was established in 1857, which is definitely more than 100 years ago; it's also not unreasonable to say that the HRE could be equated to the German state, that Spain is the continuation of Castille, and that the Roman empire can be considered the direct precursor to Italy

            There's a cultural through line for all these countries, often stretching back thousands of years, which means that they reach further back than the definition of the modern state

            • BuyMyBitcoins 9 hours ago
              Perhaps they referenced a source that only considers the French Fifth Republic as “France”? That would give it an age of 68.
              • Scandiravian 7 hours ago
                Perhaps, but that would by all accounts still be a pretty silly thing to do. It's not like another group of people with a different cultural background invaded France and displaced/killed everyone already living there

                A person with a French citizenship from the fourth republic was still a French citizen when the fifth republic was established

            • higginsniggins 9 hours ago
              If you're gonna give them credit for stuff like that, then you need to at least give credit to the United States as far back as the Pilgrims in the 1600s.
              • Scandiravian 7 hours ago
                Perhaps, they were certainly foundational in establishing traditions that are now part of American culture, but even 1600 is young compared to many, if not most, European countries

                The Franks made Paris their capital in the 5th century, so that still ~1100 years earlier

                The Germanic people exists in records from the 1st century

                Whether you can consider Spain as originating from Hispania of the Roman Empire, which would place it in the BCs, or you are more conservative and say that it doesn't count until after the reconquista from the Umayyad, we're still around the 10th or 11th century

                As for Italy, we're again in BCs with the Roman empire

                So yes, in comparison to many European countries, the US is a very young country

          • jbarberu 8 hours ago
            Sweden would like a word...
          • bdangubic 10 hours ago
            My Dad has a vacuum cleaner that is older than USA
          • bmitc 10 hours ago
            It's interesting how arrogant Europeans can be towards the U.S. when they themselves seeded the U.S.!
      • stubish 10 hours ago
        And Orange Roughy, available in Australian fish and chip shops, spawned around the same time as the first British colony there.
  • happyweasel 5 hours ago
    Proof that rucking is good for your health
  • antonvs 12 hours ago
    > Stephen Clark, an aging researcher

    Shouldn’t they find a younger researcher?

    • aix1 9 hours ago
      Ideally one called Jonathan?
    • fahrvrgnugen 9 hours ago
      To be fair, all researchers are aging.
      • lifestyleguru 4 hours ago
        Then why they are they picking on Stephen?
  • echelon_musk 5 hours ago
    I wonder where else the oldest land animal could be, if not on Earth?
    • rpozarickij 5 hours ago
      English isn't my native language, but to my eyes it looks like writing "'Jonathan' is the oldest land animal" lacks context/completeness for an article title. Perhaps "'Jonathan' is the oldest known land animal" could add some mystery, but "'Jonathan' is the oldest land animal on Earth" sounds more attention-grabbing.
    • _joel 4 hours ago
      A greenland shark, just with lots of water on top of the land too.
    • Razengan 5 hours ago
      There might be older land animals on other planets…

      (writing that just gave me mini goosebumps)

  • mapcars 4 hours ago
    oldest known animal
  • Ancalagon 14 hours ago
    He doesn't look a day over 90!
    • F3nd0 11 hours ago
      > He doesn't look a day over 90!

      He still has quite a ways to go to 1485715964481761497309522733620825737885569961284688766942216863704985393094065876545992131370884059645617234469978112000000000000000000000. :-)

    • SwtCyber 7 hours ago
      194 is the new 90 apparently
  • calacatta 12 hours ago
    Every couple Summers

    Me and a couple hunters

    Like to row in from the Isle of

    Astonishing M*erf*ers

  • verdverm 13 hours ago
    he's so old, he's completely lost the hare /j
    • a96 4 hours ago
      Hare dropped out ages ago. He won the long game.
  • rectang 8 hours ago
    > He Could Hold the Secrets to Defying Death

    The struggles for limited resources among humans marooned in a finite ecosystem will not allow us to defy death. When natural causes no longer reduce our numbers sufficiently, we will be winnowed through an unceasing epidemic of violence. So long as there are births, there will be deaths.

    If you thought the carnival of dementia brought about by modern medicine's gradual reduction of quick death was grim, just wait until medicine solves natural death entirely.

    Tortoises who give up their secrets to humans won't survive the cataclysm.

  • repeekad 13 hours ago
    > the samples were delivered from Saint Helena to Florida by the U.S. Space Force.

    ...why space force?

    • sublinear 13 hours ago
      It's a remote area and USSF has operations in nearby Ascension Island.
      • DrMandalay 8 hours ago
        St Helena is where the minimum wage workers on Ascension come from. It only exists to provide cheap labour to Britain's Atlantic territories.
    • fnordpiglet 12 hours ago
      Because Trump, Musk, et al are hoping to live forever but their lifestyle is not very forgiving - hence all haste.
      • kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 11 hours ago
        Y'all see Trump and Elon in everything.
        • Mistletoe 10 hours ago
          [flagged]
          • roarcher 8 hours ago
            You think it's cringe because it was created by Trump (Musk wasn't involved, not sure where you got that).

            The Space Force's role was previously split across military branches with overlapping budgets and poor communication. And since space duties weren't the primary focus of any of those branches, they weren't taken seriously and career tracks within them were stunted, making it hard to attract talent.

            Hate Trump all you want, but if your analysis stops at "cringe", consider that you have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

  • SwtCyber 7 hours ago
    [dead]
  • stepwisecalc 9 hours ago
    ok
  • samudrijan 13 hours ago
    In the Leftovers people think living in Jarden is why they were left. Maybe St Helena is the new Jarden.
  • pil0u 14 hours ago
    Can't we just appreciate that exceptionality as it is?

    Somehow, I wish we would leave that creature alone. For once.

    • fnordpiglet 12 hours ago
      They did opt to swab his mouth rather than draw blood to minimize his discomfort. That seems like a pretty reasonable compromise for the value of learning and science
    • KylerAce 12 hours ago
      Because a spit swab is so invasive?
  • Regex777 1 hour ago
    What's the use of living longer, all we do is leech, kill. I am glad and sad at the same time that humans are mortals.

    [I am being sarcastic here, XD]