Hacker News

The St. Helena 5 pence coin shows Jonathan, a roughly 190 year old tortoise

114 points by schleck8 ago | 36 comments

berlam |next [-]

> In July 2023 there was a fight between David and Fredrik which resulted in Fredrik being turned onto his back and left to die, in an area where his plight would not have been visible from the house or the tortoise viewing area. Fortunately he was spotted in time by visiting vet Joe Hollins, who turned Fredrik the right way up with no long-lasting ill effects. This is apparently not the first time recently when a tortoise has been turned over, though in the other occasion it was David who finished the wrong way up, not after a fight but after an unsuccessful attempt to mount Emma for mating purposes…

His companions. Never thought tortoises have such a wild life.

https://sainthelenaisland.info/jonathan.htm

binaryturtle |root |parent |next [-]

Shouldn't it be easy to attach a sensor at the belly of the turtle that alarms staff when it happens. Sounds like an actual no-brainer use for modern technology.

dieselgate |root |parent |next [-]

I raised market-sheep when I was younger and during breeding the ram wears a harness with colored chalk on the underside. You then have visual cues for which ewes are likely to become pregnant.

luipugs |root |parent [-]

Do you do something special for these ewes, like give them more food or something?

jyounker |root |parent |previous [-]

That would probably really piss the tortoise off. Imagine if your ass was made out of bone, and someone glued a lego to it. Sitting down would be a nightmare.

|root |parent |next [-]

TomatoCo |root |parent |previous [-]

I wonder why not glue it to the top? Somewhere unobtrusive.

busymom0 |root |parent [-]

Could also put one of the thrusters from SpaceX rockets (or the roadster now) to automatically turn it right side up if it happens.

whyage |root |parent |next |previous [-]

How did these animals survive as a species for millions of years with this flip-over bug in their genes? Why hasn't evolution solved it, for example, by eliminating flip-prone individuals from the gene pool and giving better survival chances to those who can right themselves?

jyounker |root |parent |next [-]

> How did these animals survive as a species for millions of years with this flip-over bug in their genes?

Whether or not they can right themselves depends upon the terrain. Falling over can be a fatal experience for humans too.

> Why hasn't evolution solved it, for example, by eliminating flip-prone individuals from the gene pool and giving better survival chances to those who can right themselves?

Evolution is all about trade-offs. Being big makes it hard to right yourself, but it also makes you much harder to flip. It probably also probably makes you much hotter to potential mates.

bragr |root |parent |next |previous [-]

You're assuming natural selection selects for not flipping over, when in reality, it selects for the winner of the shell flipping contest as presumably without intervention, the flipped tortoise does not breed, while the winning tortoise does (or at least still has the opportunity to)

yieldcrv |root |parent |next |previous [-]

They reproduce before it happens and the brood sizes are too numerous to select against that

notatoad |root |parent |previous [-]

Evolution can’t compete with Joe Hollins

hilsdev |root |parent |previous [-]

Life would be so much more magical and special if attempting to penetrate your mate could result in a slow death of dehydration and starvation, if not being torn to shreds by a passing bird of prey.

hilsdev |root |parent |next [-]

Although these days sometimes women will post your text messages on twitter, which may in fact be worse

jyounker |root |parent |next [-]

If women are posting men's text messages on twitter it's usually because the text messages are horrifying.

Insanity |root |parent |previous [-]

If they do, you dodged a bullet lol.

fmajid |root |parent |previous [-]

Praying mantises are far swifter.

throwaway2037 |next |previous [-]

Can someone copy/pasta the article here? The reCAPTCHA is too annoying. It's not worth my effort. The Cloudflare one is better -- it never asks you to select photos. Just one button click.

wand3r |next |previous [-]

Tangentially related gripe: Cloudflare has ruined the internet. I can't even read an article about a turtle using a US VPN with US IPs without solving 2 captchas. I assume some uptick is the amount of scraping labs are doing as well as a plethora of tools and bots made with AI, but it is extremely annoying how consolidated players dictate what is possible on the internet and there is no escape from surveillance capitalism. These little bits of friction add up.

Edit: I was using the VPN. The turtle was not using the VPN

alex1138 |root |parent |next [-]

I tried selling a VPN service once called TurtleSpeed

I have no idea why no one bought it

throwaway2037 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Real question: Why are you using a VPN?

f33d5173 |root |parent |previous [-]

Cloudflare has no part in this beyond providing the technology. There are various alternative "security check" pages that are used by others; cloudflare's is the best of the bunch IMO, though still annoying.

This page isn't cloudflare's, cloudflare stopped using google's captcha some years ago. It says ray id at the bottom, idk what's up with that, but it's clearly different.

wand3r |root |parent [-]

I got banned on cloudflare yesterday for refreshing the a page too many times during a failed "human check" and am still bitter about it. You are 100% correct though, this isn't cloudflare. I still stand by the point though. Having massive consolidation in the space is dangerous.

syshyk |root |parent [-]

You'll have to ask your AI to keep trying and find a way, then report back the article.

dang |next |previous [-]

Related. Others?

'Jonathan' is the oldest land animal on Earth - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49998066 - Oct 2026 (164 comments)

Jonathan the 190-Year-Old Tortoise Was Photographed in 1886 and Today - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30099606 - Jan 2022 (77 comments)

gnabgib |root |parent [-]

I can't find the originals (flagged out of Algolia?) but this story was interesting.. slight tangent Oldest known tortoise still alive, as reports of death revealed as hoax (6 points, 7 months ago - but there's healthy discussion somewhere, think the original news was 2026-04-01) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47620163

mberning |next |previous [-]

It is my dream to someday travel to St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha.

bruce511 |root |parent |next [-]

St Helena has "recently" (inside last decade) got an airport and a weekly service from Johannesburg, South Africa via Walvis Bay, Namibia.

Before that it was only accessible via an infrequent ship which took 3 days out of Cape Town, South Africa.

But given the air link it is a lot more accessible now.

Tristan is still only accessible via sea, and even if you make it there, there's no guarantee you can land. There is no port, so ship-to-land transfers are via small boat, so the whole process is very weather dependent.

Both islands though have a really interesting history, and are well worth reading about, even if you never get there.

And these days you can get a flavor of local life via the local newspaper online. https://sthelenaonline.org/st-helena-independent/

trallnag |root |parent [-]

Always like to scroll through available properties in such remote places

nephihaha |root |parent |previous [-]

I'd like to see Ascension Island too, but it is apparently quite restricted.

nephihaha |next |previous [-]

My father met Jonathan many decades ago. Jonathan has outlived him by quite some margin.

brcmthrowaway |next |previous [-]

Is this where Napoleon was exiled??

forkerenok |root |parent [-]

Yes, this is mentioned a couple of times in the article and in Jonathan's birthday song featured in one of the videos on the page. :)

brcmthrowaway |root |parent [-]

Jesus, they did things differently back then

ember-552 |next |previous [-]

[flagged]

Razengan |previous [-]

We should elect him as president