Joao Coelho de Silva, whose birth certificate says he's 131, with a Brazilian social security worker named Alexandre Santana Inss. (Photo: Via Kennedy Alfonso/Facebook)
The Ministry of Social Security in Brazil claims that the oldest man in the world lives in that country's remote state of Acre.
That title could soon officially belong to João Coelho de Souza – who lives with a 62-year-old wife and a 16-year-old granddaughter in a village called Estirão do Alcantara, deep in the Amazon jungle near the border with Peru, a 30-minute boat ride from the nearest town of any size.
A government worker from Brazil's social security agency paid Coelho de Souza a visit and was shown a birth certificate saying that he was born on March 10, 1884 – which would make him 131 years old – in the city of Meruoca in Ceará, nearly 2,000 miles east of Acre and on the opposite end of the Amazon basin.
Another worker for the agency posted pictures on Facebook, along with a post stating, "According to his son, he is quite lucid and has plenty of stories to tell."
A spokesperson for the Guinness Book of Records told Fox News Latino that they are aware of Coelho de Souza's purported age.
"While the current record holder for oldest living person (male) is Yasutaro Koide, we are aware of this claim and are investigating," the spokesperson said. "We will provide more information and an update as to whether or not Mr. Coelho has claimed the title, as soon as we are able to."
Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died aged 122 in 1997, currently holds the record for the world's longest-living person.
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Brazilian media reports said that Coelho de Souza suffered a stroke six years ago, but his health has rebounded and his appetite is still good. He eats three meals a day, with his favorite dishes being rice, fish and meat.
"He has days when he is lucid, but others when he doesn't even recognize his children," his 30-year-old daughter, Cirlene Souza, said, according to the Daily Mail. "He was very small when he came to work in Acre extracting rubber."
She added, "He has been with my mom for more than 40 years, and depends on others for everything."
In case you are keeping score, Souza's age means that her father was 101 when she was born.
"You hear everything: People that criticize and say it's a lie, and others that admire the fact someone can live so long," Souza said of her father's age. "It sometimes offends me because everything is documented, and the documents have already been examined by experts to see if they'd been falsified, and nothing abnormal was found."
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