Cover image credit: Kevstan, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Originally sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
The oldest known land animal is a 190-year-old tortoise named Jonathan. He lives on the island of Saint Helena, and he’s very close with another tortoise named Frederica.
We’re sharing Jonathan today as part of our series of prompts for Indigenous Heritage Month. Turtles and tortoises are culturally significant in many Indigenous cultures — indeed, “Turtle Island” (an Indigenous term for North America) comes from Indigenous creation stories in which a turtle carries the whole world on his back.