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andros_rex@lemmy.world to Science Memes@mander.xyzEnglish · 28 days ago

This gay tortoise is older than the word “homosexual”

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This gay tortoise is older than the word “homosexual”

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andros_rex@lemmy.world to Science Memes@mander.xyzEnglish · 28 days ago
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  • Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    To save everyone some time

    His age is estimated to be 192 as of 2025

    • Sphks@jlai.lu
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      28 days ago

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

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_homosexuality

      • tuxiqae@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        28 days ago

        Which is 36 years after this guy hatched

        • dangercake@feddit.uk
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          28 days ago

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

          • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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            27 days ago

            He’s still more tortoise than he is gay.

            • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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              27 days ago

              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
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                27 days ago

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

                • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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                  27 days ago

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

              • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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                27 days ago

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

                • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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                  27 days ago

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

          • moody@lemmings.world
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            28 days ago

            Perhaps he only ambled in.

            • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              28 days ago

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

              Or whatever the tortoise equivalent of that is 🤷

          • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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            27 days ago

            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
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              27 days ago

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

        • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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          26 days ago

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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      28 days ago

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

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        28 days ago

        That one must have enraged Stephen Fry 😄

  • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de
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    28 days ago

    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

    • andros_rex@lemmy.worldOP
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      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
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        28 days ago

        What an idiot.

        Animals in the wild obviously watch movies.

        • dangercake@feddit.uk
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          28 days ago

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

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        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
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        28 days ago

        “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.worldOP
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          28 days ago

          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
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            27 days ago

            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
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            25 days ago

            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

    • Rose Thorne(She/Her)@lemm.ee
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      28 days ago

      They’re enclosure-mates!

    • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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      28 days ago

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

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      27 days ago

      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
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        25 days ago

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

          • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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            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.

  • samus12345@lemm.ee
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    Here he is (on the left) ca. 1886 at around 50 years old:

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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      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:

      Black and white image of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, an early three-wheeled automobile

      • samus12345@lemm.ee
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        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!

        • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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          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.

          • That Weird Vegan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            26 days ago

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

          • Norah (pup/it/she)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            Yeah, same lol

        • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

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

          • andros_rex@lemmy.worldOP
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            Older than the association of the color pink with girls, and blue with boys.

          • samus12345@lemm.ee
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            He’s been around humans long enough to see to see, what, 6 or 7 generations?

    • GooberEar@lemmy.wtf
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      Is that a joke I’m too dumb to get?

      • samus12345@lemm.ee
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        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
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          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
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            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.

            https://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.

            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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adwaita

            • samus12345@lemm.ee
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              I got a link for the wrong picture, that is indeed the one I meant to post.

          • samus12345@lemm.ee
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            You’re right, I made a mistake. I put the correct one in.

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

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      Close your eyes and think of the species

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      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
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        You’re bloodline doesn’t matter if you aren’t an endangered species. Lmao

        • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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          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.

  • Lucky_777@lemmy.world
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    Great now Jonathan will be on the deportation list.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.worldOP
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      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
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        So the tariffs list, then?

        • andros_rex@lemmy.worldOP
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          Territory of the UK… so presumably same rate?

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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      Deportation**

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

      • Lucky_777@lemmy.world
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        Thanks lol, fixed it

  • squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    The Wikipedia article about Jonathan

  • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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    28 days ago

    they are just roommates

  • 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it
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    Jonathan: “That dick better be hard and ready when I get there”

  • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works
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    Glad no one decided to make tortoise chowder out of him in those 192 years.

  • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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    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
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      He shares his space with a number of female tortoises.

      He gay.

    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      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
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        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
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          Which is impressive cause tortoises are famously horny and will fuck anything

          nsfw?

          • andros_rex@lemmy.worldOP
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            The sound if you are curious or or even better.

        • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          They also use vibrations to sense partners but I don’t know if they can tell gender from that

          • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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            Not gender, only sexiness

            • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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              Frederick got the moves!

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        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
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      Not covered by my previous comment:

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

      • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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        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
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          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.

          • Norah (pup/it/she)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            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.

  • azi@mander.xyz
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    Relevant SNL

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