World's oldest land animal celebrates 190th birthday
Everybody likes a birthday. Some people live long enough to have 120 of them. The world's oldest land animal has just celebrated his 190th birthday. The animal is a Seychelles giant turtle called Jonathan. Zoologists believe he was born in 1832, but there are no official records of his birth. Some scientists think Jonathan might actually be ten years older. He could be as old as 200. Jonathan was born in the Seychelles. He was taken to the British overseas territory of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean in 1882 as a gift for the St Helena governor. Jonathan was born before Britain's Queen Victoria became queen, and before the invention of the postage stamp, Morse code, refrigeration, and the gun*. |