Meet The Animal That Never Dies, An Immortal Jellyfish That Lives Forever!

What if I told you that there exists an animal that never dies? It’s true, and it’s a jellyfish! The transparent jellyfish, known as Turritopsis dohrnii, and also known as the “immortal jellyfish”, can live up to 8 months without food, and may even live forever.

You’ve seen them on the Discovery Channel, and now you can watch them in your own home. The immortal jellyfish is here! Meet the animal that never dies, an immortal jellyfish that lives forever! however,

The immortal jellyfish

For millions of years, long before dinosaurs existed, jellyfish floated around on ocean currents. The jelly-like organisms may be found in both cold and warm ocean water, deep seas, and along coasts, and they pulse following ocean currents. Despite their name, jellyfish are not fish; they are invertebrates or organisms without backbones.

The immortal jellyfish are an ancient race of jellyfish that have lived for centuries and have no natural predators. They have long, graceful arms with tiny, delicate stinging cells that can only be felt, not seen. They are mostly nocturnal, making their way through the water using their strong, glowing tentacles to search for food. The only time you ever see one is when it is being attacked, or you are the one being attacked.

The jellyfish's origin

The phylum Cnidaria, which contains corals and anemones, is one of the earliest branches of the animal family tree. Jellyfish was most likely the earliest swimmers in the open ocean. They first arose in the late Precambrian Era, which was characterized by massive tectonic and ecological upheavals before the Cambrian explosion of animal life.

Jellyfish evolved the capacity to change from a stationary polyp to a swimming medusa at some stage. The jellyfish nervous system, muscles, and weapons, aka the stinging cells known as cnidocytes, undergo significant alterations throughout the shift.

The medusa life stage frequently co-opts existing developmental gene networks and cell types seen in polyps to do this, the researchers discovered. Furthermore, Aurelia appears to use many of the same genes present in mammals such as fruit flies and humans to design its distinct life phases.

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The jellyfish's anatomy

The anatomy of a jellyfish is extremely similar to that of a sea urchin. Jellyfish occur in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, but their body structures are very similar. A mature jellyfish’s body is made up of a bell-shaped hood that encloses its internal structure and suspends tentacles. Each tentacle is coated in cnidocytes (a kind of poisonous cell-specific to the phylum Cnidaria), which may hurt or kill other creatures. Jellyfish are carnivorous and feed on plankton, algae, and other small animals.

Most jellyfish employ these cells to capture prey or to defend themselves. Others, such as jellyfish in the Order ‘Rhizostomae,’ lack tentacles and other structures around the bell’s margins. They have eight highly branched oral arms instead. Jellyfish do not have fundamental sensory organs or a brain, but their nerve systems and rhopalia (small sensory structures) allow them to receive stimuli like light and odor and respond quickly.

Life cycle of a jellyfish: How does the immortal jellyfish live forever

The life cycle of a jellyfish:

Too far, only one species has been designated as “biologically immortal”: the Immortal jellyfish life cycle Turritopsis dohrnii. These little, translucent organisms may go back in time by returning to an earlier stage of their life cycle and can be found in waters all over the world. They are also known as ‘living fossils because they are the only known animal.

The life of a new jellyfish begins with a fertilized egg, which develops into a larval stage known as a planula. After a brief swim, the planula attaches to a surface (such as a rock, the ocean bottom, or the hull of a boat) and grows into a polyp: a tube-shaped structure with a mouth at one end and a ‘foot’ at the other. It stays in situ for a while, developing into a small colony of polyps that share feeding tubes.

‘The larva will swim around in the water until something finds a firm surface on which to settle.’ Then it will begin to mature and expand. Larvae develop into polyps, which then branch out and grow into juvenile jellyfish.’

A mature jellyfish is referred to as a medusa. Jellyfish are members of the Cnidaria group, which also includes sea anemones and corals. They are susceptible to the cycle of life and death as animals, however, one species is known to defy the norms.

Turritopsis dohrnii, a hydrozoan approximately 4.5 millimeters broad and tall (smaller than the nail on your little finger), may reverse its life cycle. It has earned the moniker “immortal jellyfish.”

When this species’ medusa is physically harmed or subjected to pressures such as famine, it shrinks in on itself, reabsorbing its tentacles and losing its ability to swim. It eventually settles as a blob-like cyst on the seabed.

Medusa cells and polyp cells are distinct; some cells and organs are found exclusively in polyps, while others are found only in adult jellyfish. Transdifferentiation reprogrammes the medusa’s specialized cells to become specialized polyp cells, allowing the jellyfish to regenerate in a completely different body plan than the free-swimming jellyfish they were previously.

They can then grow normally, creating new, genetically identical medusae. This life cycle reversal is repeatable, and under ideal conditions, these jellyfish may never die of old age.

It’s similar to a butterfly reverting to a caterpillar or a frog reverting to a tadpole. Turritopsis dohrnii, of course, is not immortal. Predators can still swallow them or they can be killed in other ways. However, because of their capacity to flip back and forth between life phases in reaction to stress, they may theoretically live eternally.

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The legend of the immortal jellyfish

Turritopsis dohrnii is just around 4.5 mm (0.18 inch) across when fully developed, making it smaller than a pinky nail. Amid its translucent bell, a bright-red stomach can be seen, while the borders are bordered with up to 90 white tentacles.

These small, transparent organisms, on the other hand, have incredible survival skills. They regress in their growth phase in reaction to physical trauma or malnutrition, changing into a polyp. The born-again polyp colony ultimately blooms and produces medusae that are genetically similar to the damaged adult, in a process that appears to be eternal. Since the discovery of this phenomenon in the 1990s, the species has been dubbed “the eternal jellyfish.”

What do we know about immortality?

Biological immortality is defined as the lack of aging. It is the absence of a persistent increase in death rates as a function of chronological age. A biologically immortal cell or organism does not age or stop aging at some point. In the context of the evolution of life.

Biologists use the term “immortal” to describe cells that are not restricted by the Hayflick limit, which occurs when cells no longer proliferate due to DNA damage or shorter telomeres. HeLa was the first and most commonly used immortal cell line, produced in 1951 from cells extracted from Henrietta Lacks’ malignant cervical carcinoma without her consent. Before Leonard Hayflick’s 1961 study, there existed an incorrect assumption promoted by Alexis Carrel that all normal somatic cells are eternal.

One can achieve biological immortality by preventing cells from reaching senescence; telomeres, a “cap” at the end of DNA, are considered to be the cause of cell aging. Every time a cell divides, the telomere shortens; when it is completely worn down, the cell is unable to divide and dies. Telomerase is an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres in stem and cancer cells, allowing them to proliferate indefinitely.

There is yet to be conclusive evidence that telomerase can be employed in human somatic cells to protect healthy tissues from aging. Scientists, on the other hand, aim to be able to create organs with the aid of stem cells, allowing organ transplants without the danger of rejection, which would be another step toward increasing human life expectancy. These technologies are still being researched and are not yet available.

Immortal jellyfish lifespan and Can immortal jellyfish die?

Immortal jellyfish lifespan: We don’t know. But we do know that they can live forever. but, The fact that they’re still around is a testament to their incredible longevity. The fact that they don’t have any kind of immune system to fight off infection also means that they cannot die of old age. They just keep going and going and going. They’re also able to reproduce at a rate that surpasses anything else in the ocean.

While this is technically possible, it is far from proven. Because these jellyfish have only been examined seldom since the early 1980s, specialists only have a few decades’ worths of data.

There’s also something more to think about. While an immortal jellyfish may age backward, it is also vulnerable to predators such as fish, sharks, turtles, and even other jellyfish. This is why the immortal jellyfish is improbable to overpopulate the Earth anytime soon.

where does the immortal jellyfish live?

The jellyfish are among the most abundant and widely distributed animals in the ocean. They are found in all oceans except the Southern Ocean and most of the deep ocean. They are mostly found in coastal waters, but some species can be found as far as the polar regions. They are commonly found in shallow waters, sometimes even on the shoreline, but they can also be found in deeper waters.

The jellyfish are the only animals that can move through the water without the use of any appendages. The jellyfish can move through the water using their tentacles.

What makes the jellyfish immortality?

They jump back in their growth phase in reaction to physical harm or even famine, changing back into a polyp. The born-again polyp colony ultimately blooms and produces medusae that are genetically similar to the damaged adult, in a process that appears to be eternal.

The medusae then mate and create new colonies of polyps that grow and develop into new medusae. In this way, the medusae can reproduce and pass on their genetic materials to the next generation. The medusae are also able to reproduce and create new colonies of polyps. As a result, the medusae can reproduce and pass on their genetic material to the next generation.

What is the oldest immortal jellyfish?

The immortal jellyfish are an ancient race of jellyfish that have lived for centuries and have no natural predators. These six creatures, on the other hand, would laugh at a 114-year-old. To open the gallery, Let’s begin with the oldest living species on the planet, as well as one of the most powerful in the animal kingdom: Turritopsis nutricula, often known as the immortal jellyfish.

The oldest known immortal jellyfish was a female named Somatophylax Geri, who was discovered off the coast of Italy in 1892. She was estimated to be somewhere between 500 and 600 years old. Since then, scientists have been able to estimate the ages of a handful of other female immortal jellyfish, all of whom were estimated to be around the same age. Some scientists believe that there may be older individuals out there, but they have yet to be discovered.

Additional Resources on The immortal jellyfish

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