Why fraudsters faked the death of Jonathan, the world’s oldest tortoise
Celebrity death hoaxes aren’t exclusive to humans, apparently. Jonathan, the world’s oldest known land animal, was reported to have died at the tender age of 193. The story quickly spread across social media by casual users and was even picked up by major outlets, which were amplified many times over.
As the old saying goes, a lie can travel the world before the truth can get its pants on. Although this truth seemed suitably slow since it was about a very old turtle that very believably could have been dead. Jonathan is not dead; he is still very much alive. Incredibly old, incredibly slow and looks like a living fossil. But he’s still alive, somehow.
Why scammers pretended the world’s oldest turtle was dead
Jonathan is a giant tortoise from the Seychelles who spent most of his life on the remote island of St. Helena. He is blissfully ignorant of what social media is and like a turtle he couldn’t comment on the report himself. So when the confusion started with a fake social media account impersonating veterinarian Joe Hollins, one of Jonathan’s former caretakers, it seemed like it had more than enough validity to be believed.
The account was, of course, on X/Twitter, the site that used to hand out blue ticks to verify that the person posting was who they said they were. Now anyone can buy them, making the whole system pointless.
That seems to be exactly what happened here, as a Joe Hollins scammer with a blue tick was also soliciting cryptocurrency donations, which instantly signaled that it wasn’t all a joke, but a scam, as the real Joe Hollins himself told. USA today.
Officials at St. Helena probably stuck her head outside to see if Jonathan was alive. Once confirmed, they quickly took to the Internet to set the record straight. Jonathan was still alive, set on outliving each and every one of us, possibly outliving the heat death of the universe.
As for Jonathan himself, he is probably not affected by all this. He has his priorities in order. He is quite old after all. However, his exact age is something we can’t be too sure about. That 193 is more of an approximation than an exact calculation. No one tracked turtles with any official paperwork in the early 19th century. However, we do have a photograph of Jonathan, already fully grown, from 1882. This means he was probably born somewhere around 1830 or earlier.
All that said, Jonathan is old as hell and has no time for your foolishness. Fortunately, his caretakers can handle the PR mess on his behalf.
