--- title: "St Helena’s Jonathan the tortoise, hatched around 1832, is still the oldest living land animal at 193" url: https://badiyaa.com/jonathan-tortoise-st-helena-oldest-land-animal-timeline/ published: 2026-11-03T04:37:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-03T04:37:00+00:00 section: Pets & Animals publisher: Badiyaa --- # St Helena’s Jonathan the tortoise, hatched around 1832, is still the oldest living land animal at 193 A fact-channel Short revived the Guinness record holder's story. His age rests on an 1886 photo, and his documented life spans 31 governors, four royal visits and a 2026 death hoax. A tortoise that hatched around 1832 is still eating bananas on the lawn of a governor’s mansion in the South Atlantic. Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise living on St Helena, is listed by Guinness as the oldest known living land animal, with an estimated age of 193 in 2026. His story is circulating again because a YouTube Short from the fact channel @factcapture1 (Fact Capture), posted on Sunday, October 4, asked a blunt question in its title: “190+ Years Old?! This Turtle Is STILL Alive!” The 60-second clip had about 37,000 likes and 154 comments when Badiyaa checked it in early November. The answer is yes. In April, after a social media account posing as his former vet falsely announced his death, a St Helena government spokesperson told Guinness the tortoise was “alive and well” and called the hoax “terrible”. ## How anyone knows he is that old Nobody recorded Jonathan’s hatching. The estimate rests on one photograph. He arrived on St Helena from the Seychelles in 1882, with three other tortoises. They were a present for Sir William Grey-Wilson, a colonial official who went on to govern the island. A picture taken in 1886, four years after that arrival, shows a fully mature animal. For this species, fully mature means at least 50 years old, which pushes his hatching date back to 1832 at the latest. Guinness stresses that this is a conservative floor, not a ceiling, and that Jonathan is probably older. Seychelles giant tortoises usually live around 150 years, so he has already outlived the typical span of his kind by four decades. ## A timeline of one tortoise’s life Badiyaa pulled together Jonathan’s documented milestones to show how much of the modern world has passed in front of one slow animal. - **c. 1832:** Hatches in the Seychelles, then part of the British colony of Mauritius. - **1882:** Shipped to St Helena, already about 50 years old, and settles at Plantation House, the governor’s official residence, where he still lives. - **1886:** Photographed grazing in the Plantation House garden with local residents. This is the image that later fixed his minimum age. - **1930s:** Finally gets a name, from Governor Sir Spencer Davis. - **1947:** Meets King George VI and the future Queen Elizabeth II during a royal visit. Prince Philip follows in 1957. - **1991:** Is introduced to Frederik, another tortoise who became his constant companion. Frederik was assumed to be female until 2017. - **2015:** Vet Joe Hollins reports he is blind from cataracts and has lost his sense of smell, but hears well. - **February 2022:** Marks a notional 190th birthday with commemorative stamps and a visitor certificate printed with his first known footprint. - **November 2022:** Governor Nigel Phillips grants him an official birthday, December 4. Islanders throw a three-day party with a cake made of his favorite foods. - **January 2024:** Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh, visits, 77 years after Jonathan met the Duke’s grandfather. - **April 2026:** A fake death post reaches two million views before the St Helena government and Guinness confirm he is fine. By Badiyaa’s count, that is 31 governors’ terms on the island, four generations of one royal family, and a face on St Helena’s five-pence coin. ## What the record actually says Jonathan holds two Guinness distinctions. He is the oldest land animal alive, and since 2022 he is also the oldest verified chelonian, meaning turtle or tortoise, ever recorded. The previous holder, Tu’i Malila, died in Tonga in 1966 at 189. An Aldabra tortoise called Adwaita, which died in India in 2006, was claimed to be 255, but that figure was never confirmed. Fact Capture’s clip plays the record for shock value, and its title treats a 193-year-old animal as a surprise. The surprising part is how ordinary his routine is. Hollins told Guinness earlier this year that Jonathan is still hand-fed once a week with fruit and vegetables by a small team, that his appetite “remains keen”, and that his carers hope “he will reach his third century – if indeed he hasn’t done so already”. His next official birthday falls on Friday, December 4, 2026, when St Helena will mark him as 194. ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Jonathan (tortoise)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_(tortoise)) *Image: Luke McKernan, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*