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b'Wish A Happy 190th Birthday To Jonathan The Tortoise\\nA birthday should always be celebrated. For Jonathan the tortoise, who turned 190 this week, that celebration involved a salad cake and a three-day party. Jonathan is the oldest known living animal, hatched in 1832. Jonathan, who calls the island of St. Helena home, may be blind and unable to smell, but he maintains a good quality of life and even continues to mate with his companions. Jonathan\\u2019s ripe old age surpasses the typical tortoise life expectancy of 150 years.\\nIn other \\u201cold\\u201d news, scientists have found fragments of DNA one million years older than the previous record: making these samples two million years old. The fragments were found in Ice Age sediment in Northern Greenland, and are from a time where the climate was much warmer than it is now.\\nVox staff writer Umair Irfan joins Ira to talk about these and other science stories of the week, including an end to the monoclonal antibodies we have for COVID and the FDA\\u2019s first approval of fecal transplant therapy.\\n\\n\\xa0\\nThe Joy And Sadness Of Bird Counting\\nThe state of the birds is not looking good. That\\u2019s the conclusion from a new report that looks at decades of community-collected population data from surveys like the annual Christmas Bird Count and the Breeding Bird Survey. Species that inhabit grasslands seem to fare the worst, with their populations down over 30 percent in the last 50 years. Meanwhile, dozens of newly identified \\u201ctipping point\\u201d species have lost 50 percent of their populations in the same time, and are poised to lose the same proportion in the coming half century.\\nDr. Amanda Rodewald of Cornell University\\u2019s Lab of Ornithology helps unpack the report\\u2019s key findings, including the good news: Decades of cooperative efforts to protect waterfowl have paid off in thriving duck populations. Rodewald explains what this can tell us about reversing declines in other habitats.\\nPlus, birder and science writer Ryan Mandelbaum joins Ira and listeners to talk about the joys of winter birding, the upcoming Christmas Bird Count, and the feathery sightings that brighten our lives.\\n\\n\\xa0\\nTranscripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.'