How can jellyfish live forever

The good news is that you can be immortal. The bad news is that you have to become a floating blob of jelly to do so. Scientists have discovered a jellyfish which can live forever. The Immortal Jellyfish known scientifically as Turritopsis dohrnii is now officially known as the only immortal creature. The secret to eternal life, as it turns out, is not just living a really, really long time.

The immortal jellyfish as it is better known popularly propagate and then, faced with the normal career path of dying, they opt instead to revert to a sexually immature stage. It turns out that once the adult form of the 4.

Does immortal jellyfish turning into a baby again? Simply explained, yes. Here is what actually happens. Their tentacles retract, their bodies shrink, and they sink to the ocean floor and start the cycle all over again. One species of jellyfish could possibly hold the key to immortality.

Turritopsiss dohrnii, also known as the immortal jellyfish, is one of the few rare organisms on this planet that can revert itself to a sexually immature stage after having reached sexual maturity. It means that it could possibly enter a never-ending cycle, in the process reaching a biological immortality. A young marine biology student, called by the name Christian Sommer, accidentally came to an astonishing discovery. While snorkeling in the turquoise waters near Rapallo, a small city in Italy, he had found, according to the local newspapers, the only animal that cheated death.

Christian Sommer, as aspiring marine biologist, has spent his summer snorkeling and collecting marine organisms so he can observe their behaviors. Among the other animals that he had collected, there was one that had piqued his curiosity. It was a small jellyfish, Turritopsiss dohrnii, today known as the immortal jellyfish. According to Sommer, this creature refused to die.

At any point of its life, it could revert to a polyp, an early stage of its development, starting its life cycle again and again.

It also means that cells are not subject to the Hayflick limit. However, it can still die from other things such as diseases, predators, or lack of food. Thus, the term biological immortality. Not all of the jellyfish species have this ability. The Turritopsiss dohrnii is the only known species that can undergo senescence and go through a transformation. Its life begins with a fertilized egg that grows into a planula larval stage.

The planula develops into a polyp, which in time transforms in a small jellyfish. The final form is medusa, a sexually reproductive jellyfish. For most jellyfish, or animals in general, life cycle stops there. But not for the Turritopsiss dohrnii. If some environmental stress, such as starvation, injury or sudden temperature change occurs, it will revert back to its polyp stage. Technically it could live forever in a never-ending life cycle. To make this analogy clearer imagine a butterfly transforming back to a caterpillar.