Jonathan the tortoise at Plantation House by Kevstan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Picture it: The Seychelles, 1832. Andrew Jackson is United States President. Earl Grey (yes the tea guy) is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Princess Victoria is only 13 years old, and is 5 years away from becoming Queen. Photography, the telephone, or the lightbulb are years away from being invented.
This is when a little (at the time!) Aldabra giant tortoise named Jonathan was born.
Jonathan the Tortoise is still around today, 193 years old. He is the oldest known living land animal in the world. He’s been living at Plantation House on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic since 1882, when he was 50 years old (ish).
I find the idea that an animal born almost two hundred years ago is still around to be completely wild! And he’s still the subject of scandal even today! A few days ago news went around on social media claiming he had died. Reputable sources like the BBC reported on it. But it was a hoax: Jonathan is very much alive, and the hoax of his passing turned out to be a crypto scam!
Two giant tortoises photographed in the grounds of Government House, St. Helena, 1886. Jonathan is on the left
How I found out about Jonathan
I am ashamed to say I had never heard of Jonathan until April Fools’ day this year, when I saw news reports that the world’s oldest land animal had died! It led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole learning all about Giant Tortoises and Jonathan in particular. We were talking about him on our live stream last week when I learned live on air that his death was a hoax!
The Life and Times of An Old Tortoise
No one knows his real birth date, but it’s estimated to be in 1832, and the Governor of Saint Helena declared December 4 to be his official birthday in 2022.
He was hatched somewhere in the Seychelles, but I haven’t found any info on what he was up to for the first 50 years of his life. In 1882 he was brought to Saint Helena as a “gift” along with three other tortoises, and has been living on the grounds of Plantation House, the governor’s residence ever since.
In the time since, he’s seen countries rise and fall, and outlived every human who ever cared for him. He witnessed the move from the Age of Sail to the Age of Steam, through the Space Age to the Information Age!
He didn’t get his name until the 1930s though, when the Governor at the time Sir Spencer Davis decided to call him Jonathan. Why Jonathan? Honestly I’m not sure. Please let me know if you have any insight!
In 1991 he was introduced to another tortoise named Frederica, and it was hoped they would mate and have offspring. That didn’t happen. For years vets were confused why they hadn’t hatched any eggs together. It was only when Frederica had to receive medical care for a lesion on her shell that doctors realized the reason: Frederica wasn’t a lady tortoise at all, she was a male! She was renamed Frederik, and has continued hanging out with (and mating with) Jonathan ever since.
Of course age has taken its toll. In the 2010s his veterinarian Joe Hollins said Jonathan was “alive and well” but had lost his sense of sight to cataracts, and also his sense of smell. Apparently his sense of hearing remains acute though. Due to his age he spends most of his time lounging around with Frederik, “sleeping, eating, and frequently mating”.
The governor's staff have to hand feed him, in order for him to get enough calories. The idea of a team of people on a remote Atlantic island making sure an ancient tortoise eats enough is very sweet to me.
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Jonathan in 2021, blind as a bat but still going strong! by Xben911 CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Death Hoax and Crypto Scam
If Jonathan was just a 193-year old tortoise with a long time paramour, that would be remarkable enough. But then the story gets really weird. On April 1, 2026 Jonathan unwittingly became the center of an elaborate social media hoax and crypto scam.
It started with a fake post on April 1 pretending to come from Joe Hollins, Jonathan’s longtime veterinarian on Saint Helena. It said Jonathan had died peacefully, which is exactly the kind of thing people share without checking. And honestly, it was plausible. He is 193 years old, he is famous, and one day that news will be real.
News spread around the world and even major outlets like the BBC reported it!
But if you’ve read this far, you already know Jonathan did not die. He is very much alive, presumably continuing to have his love fests with Frederik.
"Jonathan the tortoise is very much alive," Hollins has since told USA Today. "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."
What made this nastier than the usual celebrity death hoax was the scam attached to it. Hollins later said the person behind the fake post was asking for crypto donations. So this was not just some idiot trying to be funny on April Fools’: It was someone taking a beloved animal, faking his death, and trying to turn that into cash.
"To confirm - Jonathan is very much alive", Nigel Phillips, the governor of Saint Helena, told the BBC via email.
The Saint Helena government had to come out and say, very plainly, that Jonathan was alive and well. They said he had been seen that morning at Plantation House doing what Jonathan normally does. They also asked people to rely on official channels instead of social media rumours, which seems obvious in retrospect.
We had been discussing doing a tribute painting of Jonathan when I thought he had died. Knowing he is alive just made me want to do it even more! It’s not Jonathan’s fault he became the victim of a scam! He is a genuinely extraordinary animal, and a 193-year-old tortoise deserves better than becoming bait for some loser’s scam.
My Ante Mortem Painting Tribute to Jonathan
Painting Jonathan feels like the only sensible thing to do even though he isn’t dead. Especially because he isn’t dead. I think it’s definitely worth spending an evening trying to do him justice. We host a live stream every Thursday at 7pm ET, and this week (April 9, 2026) the subject will be Jonathan!
Whether the painting ends up good, bad, or somewhere awkwardly in between, it is meant as a sincere tribute to the world’s oldest land animal!
If you’d like to join us, and maybe say a word for Jonathan, come on by! You can catch the stream on Twitch or YouTube.