This gay tortoise is older than the word “homosexual”

To save everyone some time

His age is estimated to be 192 as of 2025

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
- Which is 36 years after this guy hatched

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

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."
- What an idiot.
  
  Animals in the wild obviously watch movies.
- 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
They're enclosure-mates!
He's blind so he recognized gay sex just from hearing it and decided to try it out.
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
- 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.

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

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:
- 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!
Is that a joke I'm too dumb to get?
- 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.

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

Close your eyes and think of the species
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
- You're bloodline doesn't matter if you aren't an endangered species. Lmao

Great now Jonathan will be on the deportation list.

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.
- So the tariffs list, then?

The Wikipedia article about Jonathan

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

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.

He shares his space with a number of female tortoises.

He gay.
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
- He can't smell, either, but he's been with that tortoise for over thirty years and snubs all the females around.
- 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?
Not covered by my previous comment:

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

Relevant SNL

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