Jim McMahon

When Jonathan the tortoise was born around 1832, President Andrew Jackson was about to be re-elected, and Charles Darwin had just set sail on an expedition that would lead to his theories of evolution and natural selection. A lot has changed since then. But for Jonathan, who’s now 190 years old and was recently declared the world’s oldest living land animal, things are basically the same. He lives on St. Helena island, a British territory far off the coast of Africa, where he spends his time eating, sleeping, and enjoying the sun. It’s not unusual for giant land tortoises to live up to 150 years, but Jonathan has survived  far longer than expected. Officials in St. Helena are now planning his birthday celebrations and commissioning a stamp in his honor. “While wars, famines, plagues, kings and queens and even nations have come and gone, he has pottered on, totally oblivious to the passage of time,” Joe Hollins, who takes care of the tortoise, told The Washington Post. “Jonathan is symbolic of persistence, endurance, and survival and has achieved iconic status on the island.”