Unlike the giant tortoise, we humans are genetically programmed to visibly age and die. Why are other creatures better off?
Even in the animal kingdom, the road to prominence is narrow. Nobody knows about a famous worm or the most prosperous bug in the world. But there seems to be a sure recipe – to become ancient. There is Jonathan, a giant tortoise, born around 1832. He lives on St. Helena, like (involuntarily) Napoleon Bonaparte once did. Jonathan is government property and features on the island’s fivepence coin. The obverse shows Queen Elizabeth II, almost a hundred years her junior.