[HN Gopher] Wild turtles age slowly, and some basically don't ag...
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Wild turtles age slowly, and some basically don't age at all
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 214 points
Date : 2022-06-26 06:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.futurity.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.futurity.org)
| rideontime wrote:
| Rumor has it Peter Thiel is already pumping turtle blood into his
| veins.
| marban wrote:
| And Tom Cruise already sampled it.
| IncRnd wrote:
| It's been confirmed, and an NFT of prehistoric turtle blood is
| on the blockchain.
| worik wrote:
| Fake news.
|
| Reptiles do not need another reptile's blood
| platz wrote:
| Planaria essentially have immortal bodies, excepting being
| destroyed by environmental forces.
| dghughes wrote:
| Microscopic Hydra are even more impressive you can blend them
| to a pulp and they'll just grow into more copies of Hydra
| animals.
| f6v wrote:
| It's very interesting to know how they get protected against
| tumors at such an old age.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| "It sounds dramatic to say that they don't age at all, but
| basically their likelihood of dying does not change with age once
| they're past reproduction,"
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Same with humans, to a degree. Actuarials place your chance of
| dying at 50% after the age of 80. So we 'stop aging' after 80!
| sethammons wrote:
| to the downvoters:
| https://www.science.org/content/article/once-you-hit-age-
| agi...
|
| At a certain point, humans appear to stop aging. Just it is
| at 105, not 80 :)
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Wasn't this result largely cause by small sample size?
| Someone wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz-
| Makeham_law_of_mortal...:
|
| _"The Gompertz-Makeham law states that the human death rate
| is the sum of an age-dependent component (the Gompertz
| function, named after Benjamin Gompertz), which increases
| exponentially with age and an age-independent component (the
| Makeham term, named after William Makeham). In a protected
| environment where external causes of death are rare
| (laboratory conditions, low mortality countries, etc.), the
| age-independent mortality component is often negligible. In
| this case the formula simplifies to a Gompertz law of
| mortality. In 1825, Benjamin Gompertz proposed an exponential
| increase in death rates with age.
|
| The Gompertz-Makeham law of mortality describes the age
| dynamics of human mortality rather accurately in the age
| window from about 30 to 80 years of age._
|
| You probably remembered the first part of the sentence
| following that:
|
| _"At more advanced ages, some studies have found that death
| rates increase more slowly - a phenomenon known as the late-
| life mortality deceleration - but more recent studies
| disagree."_
|
| Even if that were true (something wikipedia contests. See
| also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-
| life_mortality_decelerati...), that doesn't mean rate of
| death decreases, just that it increases slower than this
| model predicts.
| [deleted]
| spython wrote:
| 7156945704626380229481153372318653216558465734236575257710944
| 5058227039255480148842668944867280814080000000000000000000 is
| a good age to stop aging.
|
| Sorry, couldn't miss a factorial joke.
| RGamma wrote:
| You could witness https://czep.net/weblog/52cards.html
| 3748508088259971967302999598973478215811072000000 times
| until then. Frankly, I'm terrified.
| ddulaney wrote:
| This is not true. Either that it's 50% at 80 or that it is
| flat after 80. Here's an actuarial table:
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
|
| Annual chance of dying is 5% at 80 and continues rising every
| year (9% by 85, 16% by 90, 25% by 95, 35% by 100).
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I see that! The chart I recall is clearly very out of date.
| Thanks!
| andsoitis wrote:
| Does this actuarial table support your claim that chance of
| dying is stable at 50% after 80:
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| No, not exactly. Your chance of dying at year 80, per that
| table, is about 5% at 80, 15% at 90, and 30% at 100
| (averaging for males and females). Not the same, and not
| 50.
|
| I think the observation they're trying to convey is that
| your expected number of years remaining goes down by much
| less than one year per year at those ages. A 90-year-old
| can expect to live for another 4.5 years, but on their 91st
| birthday, the chart surprisingly predicts not 3.5 but 4.2
| years remaining. The number of expected years left drops
| more than 0.95 years per year until age 20, 0.9 years per
| year until age 40, down to 0.8 at 60, 0.5 at 80, and 0.1 at
| 100.
| bena wrote:
| Quirks of statistics.
|
| To have an average of 4.5, you need people to die before
| and after the mark.
|
| So a lot of people drop off between 91 and 92. But those
| who make it to 92 have about 4.2 years remaining.
|
| If you have a population of 100 people and 50 of them
| will live less than 1 year, and 50 of them will live an
| average of 10 years, that's 5.5 years on average for the
| whole population. But if you check that same population
| one year later, you will have 50 people who all live 9
| years on average. You've managed to increase the average
| by eliminating the bottom.
|
| Same thing is happening here.
|
| And it's probably similar to professional sports careers.
| The average NFL career is about 3 years. However, if you
| make to 3 years, your average career length is about 7
| years.
|
| We probably need more of a median or mode than a mean.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I think the observation they're trying to convey is
| that your expected number of years remaining goes down by
| much less than one year per year at those ages.
|
| But this is a necessary fact about everything. The
| alternative would be that the expected complete lifespan
| of an 81-year-old would be _less_ than the expected
| complete lifespan of an 80-year-old, and that forms a
| logical contradiction with the fact that, in order to
| achieve that longer lifespan, the 80-year-old must become
| an 81-year-old.
| pmontra wrote:
| The prediction is not surprising.
|
| The set of people alive at age N has size Sn. Some of
| them die. Some survive and form a new set of people alive
| at age N+1 with size Sn+1. Sn+1 <= Sn.
|
| If the expected number of remaining years at age N was Y,
| death removed all the people that actually lived only 1
| year or less, so the expected number of remaining years
| for people of age N+1 must be greater than Y.
|
| Life expectancy at birth is always lower than at any
| other age.
|
| Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Rom
| an_Empire
|
| > When the high infant mortality rate is factored in
| (life expectancy at birth) inhabitants of the Roman
| Empire had a life expectancy at birth of about 22-33
| years
|
| > The 46-49% that survived to their mid-teens could, on
| average, expect to reach around 48-54
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If the expected number of remaining years at age N was
| Y, death removed all the people that actually lived only
| 1 year or less, so the expected number of remaining years
| for people of age N+1 must be greater than Y.
|
| No, that is neither necessary nor true. It must be
| greater than Y-1, not Y. Your way would mean that the
| expected duration of a life was infinite.
| jewayne wrote:
| I love how, even for men, life expectancy doesn't fall
| below one year until age 113.
| candiodari wrote:
| Well that happens because the ones who die get excluded
| from the calculation. So it doesn't drop off nearly as
| fast.
|
| It's calculating P(death|age = N), not P(death|age <= N).
| Now luckily you can calculate the second one, by adding
| all values up to that age together.
|
| I would argue the value you're looking for, "when you
| die", is different still: P(death|age <= N,
| current_age=M), where M is your current age. You know,
| taking into account that you didn't die from sudden
| infant death syndrome or measles, or you wouldn't be
| here, but leaving everything in the future up to chance.
| To get that value, you should the odds of dying at all
| ages up to N, but only starting at your current age.
| vaishnavsm wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't the criterion be that
| the probability of death is the same between 80-90, 90-100,
| and so on (for example) to say that humans stop aging after
| 80?
|
| Saying that your chance of dying is 50% after 80 != saying
| it's the same consistently after 80?
| zamfi wrote:
| I think the parent poster meant "annual chance of dying
| after 80" as in, for any year 80+, you have a 50% chance of
| dying that year: it doesn't go up each year, so you don't
| "age" in that sense.
| jewayne wrote:
| But this is not true. The life expectancy for an 80 year-
| old Caucasian American woman is over 9 years. The life
| expectancy a 90 year-old Caucasian American woman is less
| than 5 years.
| peregren wrote:
| Yes the coin of death remembers how lucky you were in
| your eighties and skews towards tails in your 90s. Still
| 50/50 as its a coin.
| cylon13 wrote:
| There's only two possibilities: I'll either win the
| lottery or I won't, so it's a 50/50 shot!
| mejutoco wrote:
| I guess I am a bayesian :)
| izzydata wrote:
| But if you flip a coin every year the chances of getting
| heads after 10 rolls is quite high.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Yup, it is then still quite high - exactly 50%.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| I'm sure he meant within 10 years. So (1-(0.510))=99.9%
| chance
|
| (that is, chance of flipping tails 10 times in a row is
| 0.510 - chance of any head is what's left)
| binbag wrote:
| If this is true, why is the oldest one only trivially older than
| the oldest human?
| wila wrote:
| Oldest known turtle you mean? [1]
|
| I wouldn't call 190 years old "trivially older".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_%28tortoise%29
| randomopining wrote:
| Aging is def a feature of evolution.
| andsoitis wrote:
| The article talks about the protective phenotypes hypothesis,
| which basically says that animals with physical or chemical
| traits that confer protection (e.g. armor, spines, shells, or
| venom) have slower aging and live longer (compared to other
| animals their size).
|
| The thinking is that these protective mechanisms can reduce
| mortality rate (you're not getting eaten by others), so you're
| likely to live longer, which exerts pressure to age more slowly.
|
| Biggest support for the protective phenotype hypothesis is in
| turtles.
| pkulak wrote:
| And these protections probably take more resources to produce,
| making it less advantageous to create offspring and die off.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Isn't the worry that a specie that doesn't die off will have
| the older generation consuming all the resources, reducing the
| chance at survival by the newer generation?
|
| Also, how do these species with extremely long lifespan adapt
| to changing environment?
| MrPatan wrote:
| The turtles don't seem to be worried about it.
| olah_1 wrote:
| I've gotten interested lately in the world of Ray Peat. His big
| thing is energizing the metabolism, healthy thyroid, etc. The
| idea is to maintain the state that a child is in to prolong life
| and be healthy. Maximize energy rather than limit it.
|
| Below is an example of a random insight:
|
| > His article Cholesterol in Context states that aging "seems to
| be a state of cholesterol starvation." In other words, the
| ability to make cholesterol diminishes as we age.
|
| https://www.womensinternational.com/blog/aging-is-cholestero...
|
| It's tough to synthesize his thought though. Whoever does and
| sells a popular level book of it will make a lot of money.
| lkrubner wrote:
| The Permian/Triassic mass extinction seems to have been the
| turning point. The creatures that have not changed much since
| that earlier time are the creatures that don't age. But when life
| revived at the end of the Triassic, the world was more
| competitive, eco-systems were more integrated, and specialization
| became more common. Aging allows specialization, we can see that
| most obviously with birds, which need to maintain a specific
| weight and body mass and ratio of wing span to body mass. A bird
| that simply grew and grew and grew, like a tortoise, would have a
| changing ratio of wingspan to body mass and therefore it would
| soon lose its ability to fly. The creatures that age are those
| that have a fixed adult body shape. By contrast, the tortoises
| and reptiles and fish that live forever also seem to grow and
| grow and grow -- their body mass to external ratio changes over
| time, therefore they are less specialized.
| conradfr wrote:
| New Zealand has birds that don't fly due to the lack of
| predators and they don't get enormous and live very long life,
| IIRC.
|
| Although the ones that were big got extinct so maybe you have a
| point...
| pier25 wrote:
| So you're saying that aging is basically growth control?
| escapecharacter wrote:
| if you were optimizing for success for a whole species, do
| you see how going for fast iterations and throwing out old
| code could appear as a strategy?
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| The article states:
|
| "It sounds dramatic to say that they don't age at all, but
| basically their likelihood of dying does not change with
| age once they're past reproduction," says Reinke."
|
| In humans, kids are born well below the age when we see the
| worst effects of aging. The old do not play much of a role
| in natural selection. It seems likely that aging or lack of
| it is more of an accident, then.
| hwillis wrote:
| It's the opposite. You don't have children when you die,
| and evolution occurs overwhelmingly due to genetic
| _diversity_ rather than iteration. That is, mutations are
| not nearly as important as the number of parents with
| diverse code to recombine with. Excluding older individuals
| causes the gene pool to become more consistent, because
| mutations are easier to lose.
|
| If iteration was important, sexual maturity would occur
| drastically younger in birds and mammals, and you'd have
| tons of offspring to maximize iteration. Reptiles are the
| ones that have tons of children.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| In a competitive environment, success is a function of
| fitness over your competitors. The fitness of a
| population is a function of the speed of fixation of
| advantageous alleles, which itself is a function of the
| number of generations. Thus in competitive environments,
| selective pressure towards generational turnover is
| increased, which is accomplished by aging. The issue of
| genetic diversity is satisfied by the close relationship
| of parent-offspring diversity. There's no reason to keep
| prior generations around just for the sake of genetic
| diversity.
|
| >If iteration was important, sexual maturity would occur
| drastically younger in birds and mammals, and you'd have
| tons of offspring to maximize iteration
|
| There are always antagonist selective pressures, e.g.
| selective pressures towards longer childhoods and fewer
| offspring when parental investment requirements grow.
| ezconnect wrote:
| Growing means you're making new cell, aging is when you're
| cell seems tired and stop regenerating or being eaten by
| other cells.
| pier25 wrote:
| Aren't cells replaced periodically?
| space_fountain wrote:
| Yes, but in a very controlled way, typically with a fixed
| number of total devisions. Understanding aging is a slow
| process, but as far as I know current thought is that it
| has a lot to do with that replacement slowing down for a
| variety of reasons. This slow down seems like it may
| somewhat be a tradeoff with cancer though. Cells that
| divide too robustly end up cancer, cells that sort of
| shutdown instead are known as senescent and seem to
| contribute to aging
| fbanon wrote:
| [citation needed]
| jessermeyer wrote:
| None of this was mentioned in the article. Where to read more
| about this point of view?
| dalbasal wrote:
| This kind of happens to slow aging reptiles too.
|
| Massive snakes like anacondas, reticulated pythons and such are
| partly arboreal when small. When bigger, they can't really
| climb or hide in trees. Same thing for giant monitors. Komodo
| dragons are arboreal when small, and live a different lifestyle
| once large. They're kind of like different species, inhabiting
| different ecological niches.
| nofollow wrote:
| I wonder how some snakes' ability to atrophy and regenerate
| internal organs (including the heart) is related to aging:
| https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/-/how-pythons-regenerate-
| their-o...
| Retric wrote:
| That's much closer to recovery from hibernation than an
| anti aging effect.
| FredPret wrote:
| What are you talking about - I've been growing and growing as
| an adult!
| outworlder wrote:
| Not sure if aging is related to growing forever. Our ears never
| stop growing but they don't live forever :P
|
| It's more likely that those animals descended from an ancestor
| that didn't 'age' in the conventional sense _and_ had slow,
| unrestricted growth. Those two traits are not necessarily
| related.
|
| Not sure if I agree with the 'specialized' moniker. All
| creatures are specialized to their ecological niche. Humans are
| kind of an exception.
|
| What may have been selected for is fast and adaptable
| organisms. Why bother with 'aging' if you can tolerate damage
| over time, in exchange for more efficient organisms in the
| short term? You only need to repair enough to ensure the
| organism will reproduce (and maybe help care for the offspring
| for a while).
|
| Humans are actually pretty good in that aspect compared to many
| animals. Probably because it takes a while before we are able
| to reproduce.
| bergenty wrote:
| That's very interesting. Literally the dawn of aging. I'm
| skeptical though, do you have any sources you can point me to?
| tambourine_man wrote:
| It's an interesting hypothesis, but why can't growth slow or
| stall?
| svachalek wrote:
| I think the idea is that evolution finds "good enough"
| solutions. If you can stop growth and it has the side effect
| of putting a time limit on an individual organism's lifespan,
| that may be an acceptable tradeoff in terms of genetic
| propagation. While halting growth without aging may be even
| better there may not have been enough pressure given how many
| animals in the wild don't die of old age.
|
| Not that I've ever heard this theory before. But logically it
| seems plausible.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Right, the question is why would stopping growth
| necessarily limit an organism's lifespan. I don't think
| that's a given.
|
| If you don't age _and_ can stop growing at optimum size,
| then that 's potentially a huge evolutionary advantage. And
| since even "marginally better" can often be selected given
| enough pressure, it's hard to imagine why growing older is
| so prevalent.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| This could also be a selection bias based on the nature of the
| selection events. Longer lived species for whatever reason
| (slower metabolism, ability to go dormant for long periods) may
| have had an edge for a period of time. Its important to not
| that there wasn't a sudden radiation based on these specific
| surviving species after these events either.
| sohrob wrote:
| I like turtles!
| andrewingram wrote:
| Related: Andrew Steele, a friend of mine whom I know from school,
| wrote a book about ageing, titled "Ageless", that was published
| late last year, It's a good read - highly recommended:
| https://andrewsteele.co.uk/ageless/
|
| Worth following on Twitter if you're into the topic:
| https://twitter.com/statto
| layer8 wrote:
| From the top Amazon review:
|
| _Essentially, a brief summary of the book is that research is
| ongoing, there is some hope, but do not expect any treatment in
| the very near future, meanwhile eat healthy and exercise.
| Overall, it is a very good book for understanding the process
| of aging. Delves into scientific evidence and provides good
| description of the most recent developments. However, do not
| expect it to give you any valuable practical advice apart from
| you already probably know: you need eat healthy, do not smoke,
| exercise etc._
| cutler wrote:
| Essence Of Wild Turtle soon to appear in a pharmacy near you.
| vrc wrote:
| Already part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ex
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilinggao)
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| In multiple locales (Japan and the Caribbean) people have tried
| to sell me on eating turtle meat because it 'makes you strong'.
| Like there's this virility transfer that happens or something
| between you and the meat you consume. I only tried it once in
| Japan and it tasted like a pond, will never do that again. I
| definitely appreciate how they're pretty cool animals in general.
| I hope people get it out of their heads that eating them is like
| natural viagra or whatever.
|
| Oh wait, I did try a turtle egg at a bar one time in a shot of
| chili guaro... Don't bite them open, there's sand inside.
| downut wrote:
| People have been eating soft shell and snapping turtles in the
| SE US since... always? I grew up in the Everglades in South
| Florida and caught and ate many soft shell turtles. Fried up,
| tastes like... chicken? It's pretty good. The bullfrogs we
| gigged then were quite good too, the farmed ones I've tried in
| recent decades, not so much.
|
| At no point was there any reference to particular inherent
| qualities of turtle meat, that I recall.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I dunno I kind of class them in animals which are too close
| to humans somehow to be desirable to eat. Like they have
| personalities and long lives that just get interrupted by
| people deciding they'd make a great meal. A lot of species of
| turtles are threatened by invasive species like bullfrogs and
| habitat degradation as well.
|
| I'm not a picky eater by any means but there's definitely
| some meats out there I see on the menu and don't order,
| octopus for example - They're too smart to be munching on.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Pigs and cows seem pretty smart to me. Smarter than horses,
| at least.
|
| edit: hell, birds are pretty smart, too, even if domestic
| chickens seem exceptionally stupid.
| downut wrote:
| I've encountered many soft shell turtles (if you fish with
| bait in South Florida you will catch turtles) and I would
| not classify them as close to humans. I think if this sort
| of determination were to get any social traction then pigs
| would be the first granted clemency. I don't see that
| happening, ever. (I have no opinion at all about your
| preferences, obvs.)
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Yeah I guess we all anthropomorphize our favorite
| creatures
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >I kind of class them in animals which are too close to
| humans somehow to be desirable to eat.
|
| That is certainly the first time I have heard this said
| about turtles.
| munificent wrote:
| _> it tasted like a pond_
|
| Probably geosmin[1]. Some people really dislike it, others
| don't seem to mind as much. I grew up eating catfish and
| crawfish so I don't mind my food tasting a little muddy or
| ditchy, but that's just me.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosmin
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| That's really fascinating, I'm a big fan of knowing exactly
| what the chemical signature of scents and tastes are. It
| sounds kind of like cilantro in that way where some people
| just feel it tastes like soap while others love it (myself in
| the 2nd camp), but in the end from what I understand it's a
| genetic thing.
| omot wrote:
| "Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is
| Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the
| new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now,
| you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to
| be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
|
| Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's
| life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the
| results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of
| others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most
| important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
| They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
| Everything else is secondary"
| go_elmo wrote:
| This is one of the most important and mostly actively ignored
| facts that I know of. It is a uncomfortable truth regarding it
| as an individual but it is the only good solution for humanity
| as a whole.
|
| People (mostly) don't change - they (have to) die for change to
| happen. I'm considering myself to be modern - today. In 70
| years I'm quite sure I will no longer be by a large margin and
| I highly doubt that I'll be able to adapt my thinking
| incorporating them - just as I observe my parents and their
| peers not to be fully able to do so. As humanity with this we
| have a pool of new approaches (young) and tons of experience
| (older) which maximizes the likelyhood of finding the right
| approach to new challenges & making us survive as a species
| somesortofthing wrote:
| > People (mostly) don't change - they (have to) die for
| change to happen.
|
| How much of that is a consequence of the fact that our brains
| physiologically lose the ability to change over time though?
| [deleted]
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| The causality here seems unobvious. Is aging a necessity
| because we inherently lack the ability to change? Or do we
| become inflexible because we age?
|
| Measures of willingness to change your mind and ability to
| learn new concepts is correlated with age. It seems just as
| reasonable to argue that if we could solve aging, we'd solve
| stagnation.
| fleddr wrote:
| I think it's just a roll of the dice with age as a side
| effect.
|
| Evolution's primary mechanism is to promote traits that
| increase the likelihood that you'll survive until you can
| reproduce. Perhaps multiple times. And for some species an
| additional period to raise the new generation.
|
| So if evolution selects for a hard protective shell, this
| increases the odds that you reach reproductive age, which
| is the goal. This may accidentally also add an additional
| 100 years of lifespan. Which does nothing for reproduction,
| but it just happens anyway.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| Yeah, the lack of connection to reproduction is why I'm
| skeptical of aging being an evolutionary mechanism. The
| above quote (appears to be from Steve Jobs) seems like an
| application of old ideas about the natural order to our
| current understanding.
| tatrajim wrote:
| >People (mostly) don't change - they (have to) die for change
| to happen.
|
| An excellent justification for the forced retirement at 65
| years of faculty in universities in East Asia. The sclerotic
| atmosphere in most US research universities, where over-
| privileged professors often linger into their 80s, has in my
| lifetime led to a growing intellectual stagnation in many
| (most? all?) academic fields.
| fleddr wrote:
| Today, you may be right, but historically you're wrong.
|
| Take any period in human history before 10,000 years ago and
| you'd find that nothing ever happened. As old person, the
| world would look exactly the same as when you were young.
| Even in modern times, there's centuries with no progress at
| all.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Life is deaths greatest invention.
| RappingBoomer wrote:
| and we really have no idea how to transfer that to humans...and
| we won't for a long long long time
| downut wrote:
| Back in 1994 we purchased a box turtle at a Santa Clara pet shop.
| We still have it. It must have been fully grown then because I am
| pretty sure it hasn't changed in size at all. I don't think we
| have noticed any behavioral changes, either. Appetite seems the
| same. Still gets pissed off and bangs its shell against the
| terrarium glass when it's hungry. So that would be something like
| 27 years without noticeable change.
|
| Anyway we're close to retiring and I suppose it will transition
| to my daughter eventually. Maybe it will outlive her too.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I found a box turtle once, in the middle of the street in Long
| Beach, CA, and despite all of the Internet advice not to mess
| with box turtles, I didn't want it to get run over, so I
| brought it inside, went to the vet, and ended up keeping her
| for a few years until the Army was supposed to send me to
| Hawaii, where you're not allowed to bring reptiles. So I gave
| her to a family at Fort Lawton that built a huge enclosure in
| their back yard, and they took her to another vet to try and
| get an age estimate, and they guessed she was at least 70 years
| old. She definitely did not behave in any obviously elder
| manner. Same as any other box turtle I've ever met.
| hkon wrote:
| The idea that a turtle gets pissed off and starts banging the
| glass made me laugh. Feed your turtle!
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| We have a turtle that was found somewhere around 30 years ago,
| so full age largely unknown, but... like old.
| 202206241203 wrote:
| Sounds like the beginning of a clan dedicated to serving a
| totem beast.
| downut wrote:
| I have resisted naming our turtle 'Om'.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Pratchett?
| justinpowers wrote:
| Resistance won't be needed if you name it 'Ohm'.
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