Unlike humans, being ‘’negligibly senescent’’, turtles do not continue to age once their bodies reach maturity. In theory, they might be able to live forever, though in practice this would never happen.
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Injury, predation, or disease will eventually kill them. But turtles have been known to live beyond 150 years without exhibiting any signs of old age. Fish and amphibians also share this enviable characteristic.
For most animals, there are three basic ways they can die: disease, injury, or old age, which is also called senescence. But a select few species are seemingly immune from aging itself, a phenomenon known as negligible senescence.
The gradual accumulation of cellular damage and degradation that will eventually kill other animals (including us) slows to a virtual standstill, prolonging the life - and, in fact, the youth - of any animal lucky enough to be negligibly senescent. This also means of course that turtles and tortoises can continue to reproduce at very old ages.
Tortoises are the most famous negligibly senescent animals. An Aldabra giant tortoise named ‘Adwaita’ (meaning "unique" in Sanskrit), who records show had been in the Alipore Zoological Gardens in Kolkata, India since 1785, was thought to be 255 years old when he died in 2006. Subsequent carbon dating of his shell confirmed that he really had been born around 1750, making him the oldest known tortoise in the world; and thought to be one of the world's oldest creatures.