In 1832, an egg hatched on a beach on Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles.
Baby tortoise came out.
That tortoise, he's now called Jonathan, just celebrated his 194th birthday.
Happy birthday, Johnny!
Happy birthday, Johnny!
Slow and steady wins the race, eh?
It does.
As well as his birthday, they've sequenced his genome.
And it's got some intriguing hints as to why he's lived that long.
Yes, so it looks like it's all to do with his mitochondria, the cellular compartments that provide all our energy.
And that is very interesting for us because mitochondria are increasingly linked to all kinds of aspects of our health.
From New Scientist, this is the world, the universe and us.
I'm Dr Rowan Hooper.
And I'm Dr Penny Sarchet.
Now, what they found with Jonathan, the giant tortoise,
who is the world's oldest known land animal, is that parts of his genome
mean that his mitochondria function as efficiently as the mitochondria of a five-year-old member of his species.
Wow.
So he could...
He could equal a five-year-old tortoise in a flat-out sprint.