Image credit: Takashi Murai
Some people would love to live forever, while others would say that sounds like torture. You might have heard of the Greek prophet Sibyls, who wished for immortality without asking for youth. As you can imagine over time she withered down to a small size and wished for death.
Let’s remove aging from the equation, if you could start again from the age of a toddler would you? Throw away the concept of aging, as once you're stressed or starving you could start again. That is what a jellyfish called Turritopsis Dohrnii better known as the Immortal Jellyfish can do.
It's a tiny jelly fish at the size of 4.5mm, which can be found in most tropical oceans around the world. What makes this species stand out is, it's biologically immortal. This means it can be killed but can't die of old age. After it reaches maturity, it can turn back into a sexual immature age. It only takes a few weeks for it to reach maturity once again. This is uncommon for jellyfish as they usually have a fixed life spanned.
Let’s go over the animal’s lifecycle in a bit more detail. The jellyfish starts their life as a larva called a Planula, which settles on the sea floor and begins to grow. It will grow into a cylinder shaped colony called Polyps, which would only take a few weeks before it becomes a Mesuda (adult); the form that most people recognise. When it’s threatened or stressed it can start the cycle again. It will become a ball of tissue within three days, before turning into a young polyp. Then a colony of identical clones of the original will form repeating the cycle. In short it’s like a butterfly turning back into a caterpillar.
This has inspired scientist to figure out, how it can transform its cells to a younger state. There are many medical implications if we do this to a fraction of our cells. We could cure some diseases that causes cells damage like Alzheimer, autoimmune diseases, Cancer and Parkinson etc. This doesn’t mean we’d live forever as the Jellyfish can still die of other diseases but this would definitely add longevity.
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Hi @onionking, a couple of months ago I read about this. Very fascinating!
Upvoted, resteemed and followed you, nice blog. Thank you, and stay cool!
Thank you very much, for your interest. The animal kingdom has some many fascinating and strange creatures, I couldn't help but to write about these.
I had no idea something like this existed! So so cool. I love nature and all the animals within it. They facinate me.
I think it's amazing, how they have evolved in this way. I agree I do think all animals are amazing even spiders. I'm not beyond admitting, I find them frightening as well
Haha i dont mind spiders or snakes but I live in Oz and they keep the flies and mozzies at bay so we keep them around and just kill poisonous ones once a year.
I've always wanted to go to Australia but I've heard about the size of spiders. I don't know if I could handle it without showing myself up. I wouldn't know the first thing about which ones are poisonous.
@onionking they hide pretty good and are more scared of us then we should be of them. the ones with the red backs are the majority of what we get around the house and they only ones I will step on. I had one crawl on me when I was a kid that freaked my dad out more than me, I didn't know it was poisonous until he had wacked it off and then squished it.
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