By: Stephen Chen

If you ask questions to 10 people, “what’s the oldest land animal in your mind?”, nine people will probably tell you that it is a tortoise. They would be right. Certain species of tortoises can live longer than 200 years. Why? How? Two good questions that I will answer now.

Turtles’ shells help them keep them safe and healthy for a very long time. In fact, this “home” is crucial to their surviving at all. Tortoises will die quickly if they leave their shells. The shells can not only protect them from predators but also reduce water evaporation. A simple example of evaporation is us, humans. We move quickly, don’t have shells, and are warm-blooded, so we always need to get food and water which can give us the necessary energy, hydration, and nutrition to survive. But a tortoise is cold-blooded, moves slowly, and has a protective shell, so it can live with a few foods and drinks.

It’s not just their shells that help turtles live so long. Tortoises’ habits and behaviors also let them reach astounding ages. You might not believe it, but a tortoise likes to sleep 15-16 hours daily to decline its consumption and digestion. To have a winter/summer sleep is what they have to do every year so that they don’t really need to find food and increase demand of water. There is a positive relationship between the tortoise’s slow action and long life.

The last reason has to do with the tortoise’s cell structure. Same instance humans and this animal, the research shows that a tortoise’s cell division, which impacts the length of life, is double the amount compared to a person. For a human, cell division can happen about 50 times. But it’s more than 100 times for a tortoise.

All in all, we are finding the reasons why tortoises can live over 2 centuries. But we don’t have all the answers. I hope that soon the whole truth will appear, and we can learn a lot from it. Maybe people can live longer just like this magical animal.