This gay tortoise is older than the word “homosexual”
from andros_rex@lemmy.world to science_memes@mander.xyz on 11 Apr 15:10
https://lemmy.world/post/28086090

#science_memes

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Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de on 11 Apr 15:24 next collapse

He must’ve copied it from gay tourists who did it in front of him! Surely it’s just a show of completely non-sexual dominance. They’re just really good friends. /s

NakariLexfortaine@lemm.ee on 11 Apr 15:42 next collapse

They’re enclosure-mates!

andros_rex@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 16:05 next collapse

Paul Goldstein, the photographer who captured the images in Kenya’s Maasai Mara reserve in August, said many other species are known to engage in such behavior and that, for example, he had seen giraffes doing it.

“It was just a dramatic thing to see,” Goldstein said of the male lions. He was astonished by Mutua’s remarks, declaring it “not normal” and attributing the behavior to demonic possession, or copying what he clearly believes is amoral human behavior.

“These animals need counselling, because probably they have been influenced by gays who have gone to the national parks and behaved badly,” said Mutua. “I don’t know, they must have copied it somewhere or it is demonic. Because these animals do not watch movies.”

“The demonic spirits inflicting in humans seems to have now caught up with the animals,” the film classification board director said. “That is why I will say isolate the crazy gay animals.”

SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 16:33 next collapse

What an idiot.

Animals in the wild obviously watch movies.

dangercake@feddit.uk on 11 Apr 18:51 collapse

Exactly, how else are they going to learn “work the shaft while gently cupping the balls”, from a demon?

kautau@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 17:58 next collapse

film classification board director

Oh well then say no more. That’s certainly a higher scientific certification than anyone else who could have anything to say on the matter

Dasus@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 19:23 collapse

“That is why I will say isolate the crazy gay animals.”

Good luck, that guy. There are claims some 90% of giraffe sex is male on male.

andros_rex@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 19:48 collapse

First photographs of humpback sex was gay sex.

By Darwinism, homosexual behavior makes sense. Competition for resources (both reproductive access and food) leads to aggression, but a species where all the males kill each other will lack biodiversity. Physically weak male cuttlefish will camouflage as female to allow stronger get males to release on them, and then go take a female after. Things like this don’t happen unless they are beneficial. Bisexuality just makes sense, animals don’t give a shit about religions or morals and sex feeling good is going to be heavily selected for in most sexual species (notable exceptions being feline and ducks - the penis like thing that comes out of a cloaca is fucked up.)

Dasus@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 22:44 next collapse

Oh I had forgot about the whale thing. Thanks for the refresher.

Yes you make very good points. Unfortunately this is a sort of “if this kids could read, they’d be very upset” moment, as you’re preaching to the quire here, and the people who can understand that usually also accept it.

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 14 Apr 11:44 collapse

also like, what’s the resource expenditure of nonreproductive sex, really? a bit of exercise and some protein, whoop-de-doo don’t do it in the winter 4head

ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml on 11 Apr 18:57 next collapse

He’s blind so he recognized gay sex just from hearing it and decided to try it out.

prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 12 Apr 13:58 collapse

And then when they’ve got nothing left, they ult:

Well, God made us in his image and that’s what separates us from the animals. So it doesn’t matter if gay tortoises exist

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 14 Apr 11:45 collapse

reasonable, except i’m not made in the image of god, i was subcontracted out to zeus and we all know what he was like.

prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 14 Apr 14:02 collapse

Lol as if Yahweh would subcontract anything. Dude is the original narcissistic dictator.

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 14 Apr 16:15 collapse

the lord allmighty has no qualms about subcontracting, he will however (in his infinite wisdom) blame the subcontractor for any flaw regardless of how poor his specifications were.

squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 11 Apr 15:33 next collapse

The Wikipedia article about Jonathan

Lucky_777@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 15:56 next collapse

Great now Jonathan will be on the deportation list.

andros_rex@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 15:59 next collapse

He’s already on an island in the middle of the ocean that’s so remote it wasn’t even occupied when the Europeans took it. St. Helena is where they sent Napoleon to try to keep him away.

ilovededyoupiggy@sh.itjust.works on 11 Apr 17:36 collapse

So the tariffs list, then?

andros_rex@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 19:15 collapse

Territory of the UK… so presumably same rate?

dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works on 11 Apr 23:29 collapse

Deportation**

Unless he’s on the list to be aborted then deported, in which case you got it.

Lucky_777@lemmy.world on 12 Apr 00:39 collapse

Thanks lol, fixed it

Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 16:08 next collapse

To save everyone some time

His age is estimated to be 192 as of 2025

Sphks@jlai.lu on 11 Apr 16:30 next collapse

And “The first known public appearance of the term homosexual in print is found in an 1869 German pamphlet.”

…m.wikipedia.org/…/Terminology_of_homosexuality

tuxiqae@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Apr 18:28 collapse

Which is 36 years after this guy hatched

dangercake@feddit.uk on 11 Apr 18:48 next collapse

Can we all agree to use “Sashayed in” rather than “hatched”?

moody@lemmings.world on 11 Apr 19:21 next collapse

Perhaps he only ambled in.

Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Apr 19:53 collapse

I’m thinking something in a casual saunter with a touch of hip sway.

Or whatever the tortoise equivalent of that is 🤷

jerkface@lemmy.ca on 11 Apr 21:03 next collapse

He’s still more tortoise than he is gay.

dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works on 11 Apr 23:27 collapse

That’s probably true. But like, by weight? Surface area? Gay actions per hour vs tortoise actions per hour?

Hard to nail down.

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca on 11 Apr 23:56 next collapse

Don’t nail tortoises down. They reeeeally hate that.

dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works on 12 Apr 00:07 collapse

Well then they shouldn’t slowly walk all over the place!

jerkface@lemmy.ca on 12 Apr 02:21 collapse

By the degree his life would change were that aspect of him to change.

dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works on 12 Apr 02:25 collapse

Ah yep. His life would be significantly more different if he stopped being a tortoise.

jerkface@lemmy.ca on 12 Apr 14:26 collapse

Honestly, it’s debatable whether a blind tortoise with no sense of smell is expressing homosexuality just because they seek sexual gratification with an object that happens to be male. He might also fuck rocks.

blazeknave@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 21:43 collapse

I want to like this bc I’m almost genx, but I think it’s sexist? What am I supposed to do in 2025?

dangercake@feddit.uk on 12 Apr 00:01 collapse

Oh you don’t stop now, you sashay harder. For all of us.

GraniteM@lemmy.world on 13 Apr 05:48 collapse
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works on 11 Apr 17:32 collapse

Alan Davies: “And you could fit his accomplishments on the back of a stamp.”

Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Apr 19:53 collapse

That one must have enraged Stephen Fry 😄

TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub on 11 Apr 16:22 next collapse

Dumb question: can Johnathan’s cataracts be fixed (a routine surgery on humans) so he can see Frederick is a guy? As a bonus, he could see food morsels without the need of olfaction.

I also wonder if the loss of olfaction and sight mean Johnathan can’t recognize the sex of a partner even if it was right in front of him.

I understand he might really be a gay tortoise, but he could also be gay by necessity.

SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 16:38 next collapse

He shares his space with a number of female tortoises.

He gay.

ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Apr 17:04 next collapse

Tortoises use sight and have a good sense of sight to be fair but they also use scent from the cloaca to gather information about things like sex of a partner

he knows what he’s doing

SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 18:37 next collapse

He can’t smell, either, but he’s been with that tortoise for over thirty years and snubs all the females around.

ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml on 11 Apr 19:03 next collapse

Which is impressive cause tortoises are famously horny and will fuck anything

nsfw?

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/4ec4b89b-1726-4e06-a626-80c85843dd4a.jpeg">

andros_rex@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 19:55 collapse
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Apr 20:05 collapse

They also use vibrations to sense partners but I don’t know if they can tell gender from that

SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 20:31 collapse

Not gender, only sexiness

TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub on 12 Apr 05:07 collapse

Frederick got the moves!

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 14 Apr 16:18 collapse

also like, the other tortoise is presumably not blind and anosmic, so it knows what’s going on and isn’t objecting.

or what do i know, maybe male tortoises become remarkably feminine with age?

SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 18:38 collapse

Not covered by my previous comment:

Apparently doctors investigated cataract surgery several years ago, but deemed it too risky.

TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub on 12 Apr 05:09 collapse

That’s sad, because it’s not like he could go blind from the surgery. He’s already blind. Most persons would risk the surgery if there was a chance to see again, I guess he would too if he could choose.

crater2150@feddit.org on 12 Apr 07:04 collapse

If it is anything like other surgeries done at vets, the risky part with such an old animal is the sedation, not the surgery itself. And with animals you usually need to fully sedate them, as they don’t understand that they need to stay still.

princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 12 Apr 14:24 collapse

This is always risky in older humans as well. My grandfather broke his wrist ~10 years ago from a fall. He was doing fine, they kept him for observation because he also hit his head, and he needed surgery to set his wrist. They put him under general anaesthetic, he vomited, aspirated and they broke 5 ribs reviving him. He was in ICU for a week. Still alive today though.

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 11 Apr 17:07 next collapse

they are just roommates

samus12345@lemm.ee on 11 Apr 18:12 next collapse

Here he is (on the left) ca. 1886 at around 50 years old:

<img alt="" src="https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220126130411-03-oldest-tortoise-jonathan-scli-intl.jpg?q=w_1160%2Cc_fill%2Ff_webp">

GooberEar@lemmy.wtf on 11 Apr 18:28 next collapse

Is that a joke I’m too dumb to get?

samus12345@lemm.ee on 11 Apr 18:39 collapse

No, I just think it’s cool to see an animal in such an old photo that’s still alive today. He wasn’t young even then.

GooberEar@lemmy.wtf on 11 Apr 18:53 collapse

I don’t think that photo is from 1886, not with those vehicles in the background. So I assumed it was a joke comment or AI, but all the subjects had normal finger counts, so I assumed joke.

Dasus@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 19:07 next collapse

The photo is from 1947, not 1886, according to my hasty googling.

The tortoise is from ~1832 and still alive and would’ve been around 50 in 1886.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_(tortoise)

Edit Here’s a photo of him from 1886 the earlier poster prolly confused this photo with the 1947 photo for some reason.

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/89874c7a-eb5f-4010-a766-c43198a6b7f1.png">

Edit 2 and looking at these tortoises there was one alive until 2006 who was estimated (but not confirmed) to be from ~1750. That’s crazy. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adwaita

samus12345@lemm.ee on 11 Apr 19:15 collapse

I got a link for the wrong picture, that is indeed the one I meant to post.

samus12345@lemm.ee on 11 Apr 19:14 collapse

You’re right, I made a mistake. I put the correct one in.

Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 19:05 collapse

Do you have a source for that date? Those cars in the background don’t look like anything that would’ve existed in 1886. In fact the first car put into production was patented in 1886 and it looked like this:

<img alt="Black and white image of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, an early three-wheeled automobile" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/1885Benz.jpg">

samus12345@lemm.ee on 11 Apr 19:10 collapse

Oops, you’re absolutely right, I grabbed the wrong photo. Fixed. Pretty funny that that you can have a photo decades later than you thought and you can’t tell by the animal in it, but by the technology in the background!

Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world on 11 Apr 19:17 next collapse

That is definitely funny. I was just thinking, “How many fads and fashions has this one tortoise seen in his life?”

samus12345@lemm.ee on 11 Apr 19:21 next collapse

He’s been around humans long enough to see to see, what, 6 or 7 generations?

blind3rdeye@lemm.ee on 12 Apr 00:18 collapse

Heh. I just spent half a minute squinting the dark trees in the background, looking for the outline of a car. I didn’t realise the picture was swapped.

princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 12 Apr 13:46 next collapse

Yeah, same lol

aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 13 Apr 01:55 collapse

me too. I thought i was more blind than the tortoise in question lol.

drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world on 12 Apr 05:50 next collapse

Okay, I am an ally and all. But when you are endangered ya just got to take one for the team

DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social on 12 Apr 07:25 next collapse

Close your eyes and think of the species

prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 12 Apr 13:56 collapse

Meh… As someone with no interest in having children and could not care less about what that might mean for my “bloodline,” I get it lol

CaptnNMorgan@lemmy.world on 13 Apr 02:38 collapse

You’re bloodline doesn’t matter if you aren’t an endangered species. Lmao

Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de on 14 Apr 11:41 collapse

not like it has to be an intimate and romantic moment anyways, many a religious group have perfected the art of making it as transactional as possible without outright using syringes.

azi@mander.xyz on 12 Apr 08:39 next collapse

Relevant SNL

100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it on 12 Apr 09:55 next collapse

Jonathan: “That dick better be hard and ready when I get there”

ryedaft@sh.itjust.works on 13 Apr 21:25 collapse

Glad no one decided to make tortoise chowder out of him in those 192 years.