Here:
He is the oldest known living terrestrial animal in the world.
And there was me thinking I was getting old.
He has his own Wikipedia page:
Jonathan (hatched c. 1832) is a Seychelles giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea hololissa), a subspecies of the Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea), and the oldest known living terrestrial animal in the world. Jonathan resides on the island of Saint Helena, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic Ocean.
The tweet I linked to above says “happy birthday” to Jonathan, but they don’t know exactly when he was born. He could be even older.
Qué bella foto! quién es su autor?
Don’t know.
There is hope yet for the rest of us then, if indeed aging is programmed into our cells rather than being some sort of unavoidable universal constant.
According to Geoffrey West’s very interesting book Scale, the invariant across species is average heart beats in a lifetime. Shorter lived creatures have a higher metabolism. Something to do with cost benefit ratios of cellular maintenance and reproduction rates.
Hm, I am not sure what to do about that. Keep calm and keep my heart rate down, I suppose.