The World's Only Immortal Animal

Laro

Laro

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The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth.

Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span. Scientists say the hydrozoan jellyfish is the only known animal that can repeatedly turn back the hands of time and revert to its polyp state (its first stage of life).

The key lies in a process called transdifferentiation, where one type of cell is transformed into another type of cell. Some animals can undergo limited transdifferentiation and regenerate organs, such as salamanders, which can regrow limbs. Turritopsi nutricula, on the other hand, can regenerate its entire body over and over again. Researchers are studying the jellyfish to discover how it is able to reverse its aging process.

Because they are able to bypass death, the number of individuals is spiking. They're now found in oceans around the globe rather than just in their native Caribbean waters. "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion," says Dr. Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute.

Source: http://green.yahoo.com/blog/guest_bloggers/26/the-world-s-only-immortal-animal.html

This is just amazing. So we could be looking at an animal over 300,000 years old, or what? The craziest thing is that this is real. Not fiction.

Any comments?

 
Wow that's amazing! Hopefully scientists will learn more from it and develope some serum or something so humans can do it. :D although it would cost $100000000000 -__-
 
Wow! That IS amazing. Can't believe something like this exists. It's only a mtter of time before we use it for medicine and to stop aging.

Maybe I'll live to a 200 after all. :-)
 
That is absolutely insane. Immortal animals. It makes my head spin just thinking about it. I wonder will we ever be able to do this. This may be us in fifty years time.
 
Id hate to be immortal, it'd get boring and we'd be over populated to fuck. However if they could some how make it so you can look younger til you die, then that would be the best anti-aging treatment ever. Though, I'd probably be old and wrinkly/dead by the time they come up with summat anyway

Snazzy for the fish though :monster:
 
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's not really immortal, it just won't die of old age. If these Jellyfish bastards drank alcohol they'd die of Cirrhosis just like people do. Mortality and knowledge of our own mortality is a crucial part of what it means to be human.
 
Meh, they ARE just jellyfish. Yeah, this is cool, but they aren't particularly important animals and they aren't really living forever so much as recycling their age cycle over and over again.
 
While that is an amazing thing they can do, I agree with Bez on this. They could still be killed you know, but they won't die of old age, that's all. If they don't get harmed by anything though, then yeah, it could just live on and on, which would be pretty nice. :D
 
Princess Bubblegum said:
Wow! That IS amazing. Can't believe something like this exists. It's only a mtter of time before we use it for medicine and to stop aging.

Maybe I'll live to a 200 after all. :-)
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A flawed success if we can stop ageing. People were meant to die at some point. If everyone could live to 200 or so, we'd have a much bigger problem with over-population then we do now.

Adamant said:
Meh, they ARE just jellyfish. Yeah, this is cool, but they aren't particularly important animals and they aren't really living forever so much as recycling their age cycle over and over again.
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They might just be jellyfish but they do have a purpose to being here. You take them off and you screw up the entire food chain. So while they might not do a whole bunch, in the long run they are very important to the worlds ecosystem.
 
That's pretty neat stuff right there.

I've never heard about this until now tbh :hmmm:

The fact that this jellyfish can reverse it's age and never die of old age is a sight to see.

and I agree with Kelly here. I mean we would have to die eventually but if they could figure out a way to make us look young when we aren't... :wacky:
 
Awesome thread Miranda, I love seeing stuff like this :awesome:

Well, I have family members who teach marine biology and I'd never heard of this before, this is completely fascinating :gasp: I only hope that in the process of studying how their biological processes work, that they don't get exploited for the purpose of people trying to enhance their own lives, even though I have a bad feeling they probably will :jtc: It's funny to me whenever people get jealous of other animals' special biological functions or properties, I understand the concept of not wanting to die or age but that doesn't mean we should just milk every other living thing besides humans for the purpose of bettering ourselves. That's just disgusting and twisted :mokken:

/envirorant. Sorry. But anyway, this is really interesting :) Thanks for posting it.
 
I really hope we DON'T figure out how to do this. Yay for the jellyfish, but human immortality would be just horrific. Do you know how boring it would get? We aren't meant to live forever. Plus, you think the earth is overpopulated now?? Good Lord, I can only imagine...
 
The Dоctor;763017 said:
Hmm, so they're almost like Time Lords then... :hmmm:
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That was my first thought when I read the first post xD
 
human cells serve vastly different functions than jelly cells. i doubt we'll be able to make use of transdiffer-whatzit for our own purposes any time soon.
 
I'd rather just live my natural lifespan and die when the time comes. It'll be quite a terror to see myself living to see my great-great-great-great-etc grandchildren living with me while I'm still there, alive because I took an immortality pill. Not that I'd hate them, but I'd prefer heaven when I've seen enough of the earth.

Besides, I don't really want to deal with the ethical issues that may arise from this immortality thing.

An anti-physical-aging drug would do me fine. I'd be glad just looking young, and not living forever.
 
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