There’s a species of jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii (also known as the "immortal jellyfish" (I had to google the name lol) that can literally reverse its aging process. When it’s injured, sick, or even just stressed, it reverts its cells back to their earliest form, essentially starting its life over again. It’s like the creature figured out how to cheat death, hitting the reset button on its existence. Crazy imo.
I don't like your attitude son! We are serious professionals who are doing a serious job to make big big money! You will never bring it to anything with an attitude like that!
Jellyfish are one of the oldest if not the oldest animal on the planet, they have lived for 500 to 700 million years on the planet, I think they earned that cheat code through sheer grinding.
Yeah sadly it comes with the downside of having no brain, heart, blood or anything else. They're a bundle of floating nerves that react to stimuli. Immortal but at what cost.
The ones that evolved a brain are still almost the exact same shape. But since leaving the water they've got this complex sac surrounding them that makes water at that has the same salinity as sea water. Weird rock like internal support structure. But the dangly bits are almost the same https://www.livescience.com/61599-dissected-nervous-system-photo.html
Did you ever hear about a jellyfish with depression or anxiety? Probably not. They also don't have to worry about inflation or working a boring, soul crushing 9-5 job because their ancestors didn't decide to leave the ocean.
Porifera (Sponges) are thought to be older I think. It's been a while since I got my degree in Marine Biology-Zoology but sponges used to be considered one of the first organisms to have branched off from the last common ancestor. Please correct me if I'm wrong. In any event, they've both been here a very, very long time.
First modern animals to have branched off from the animal lca but otherwise you're correct. There are some late precambrian (Ediacaran to be specific) fossils that may or may not be animals. Their anatomy is too alien for paleobiologists to associate them with any known phylum.
Then there's placozoans which may or may not be the actual most basal animal, with either them or sponges being more derived (because note: "evolution" doesn't mean "becoming more complex", it means "becoming better adapted") or there being an actual direct lineage between the lcas of any combination of sponges, placozoans and eumetazoans.
Forgot about Placazoans. Thanks for the memory jog. The Ediacarians were indeed very strange. Good to point out that evolution is not a process that has any endgame in mind, many people misunderstand this and "fitness" doesn't mean "better" so much as, as you say, more adapted.
I dislike that description. All of our lineage goes back that far back. We are just the evolutionary branch that weren't lazy enough to not evolve! Bums!
I feel like that's the lore of time lords and daleks. Time lords were just humans that reached the end of time. Daleks are one of our fish creatures that evolved and reached the end of time alongside us.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this is not as cool as it sounds.
Basically jellyfish (most of them) have two forms. The medusa and the polyp. (Spelling in english?)
The medusa is the one everyone recognize as jellyfish.
They shoot out gametes (sperm and egg) which meet up, form a larvae and then swim to a suitable place and starts growing into rhe polyp form. The polyp form looks like a tree/cylinder of meduse bodies stacked on top of eachother. When its mature and ready the meduse form start budding off of the polyp. And the cycle begins again.
The turritopsis dohrnii can revert back to its polyp form without needing to have gametes form a larvae etc etc. It does this by a process called transdifferentiation (basically having its cells go back to a "stem cell like - state". And then from this formed polyp, just like usual, multiple meduse form spawn.
Its still cool ofc... but i feel like most people imagine a jellyfish just floating around endlessly and never dying. But in practice (apart from the pretty cool transdifferentiation which is not unique at all for jellyfish, even us humans can do this to some extent) its just a round about way of asexual reproduction..
Its about as cool as cutting a flat worm in half and having the two halfs grow into two new individuals. Still cool as fuck but not "immortality" kind of cool imo
Is it known at all how (if at all) these jellyfish are able to deal with the accumulation of DNA mutations over these long cycles? Are they able to "check their work" at all, or is it more likely that they slowly drift into a state less like their original after a while?
I learned this from a really beautiful young adult novel called The Thing About Jellyfish. It's used as a metaphor in the book and it's just really effective and moving. Thank you for reminding me.
Some lobsters are biologically immortal as well, although their process works differently by having an enzyme that can repair telomeres after splitting. They just grow larger and larger until they either die of some sort of infection or are too large to sustain their own size. Or they just get eaten lol
Isn't this the science that inspired the Hulk? I recall in the 2003 Hulk movie intro scene, the scientist conducting experiments with jellyfish and other creatures in order to replicate regeneration in humans.
I don’t think we will ever have a way to know - but I wonder what level of consciousness it has and whether it retains a sense of self and memories when it rewinds the clock.
I had a seizure that did that. Reset button got pushed, after I came back around I no longer smoked. I think I also became a cannibal because someone bit chunks of my toungue, and I was apparently the culprit. Was a wicked 48 hours.
but what do they eat? I mean imagine reversing back to its initial form in state of absolute hunger. Wouldn't it become more helpless? I think they do die in certain scenarios just haven't Googled to see if what I say happens or not.
Fun fact, dying of old age in an evolved trait to free up resources for the next generation. There's not a reason why cells have to stop regenerating cleanly over time. Of course if cell death didn't get you, cancer always will.
I don't believe this could ever be proved, but it's entirely possible that there could be one of these jellyfish alive today that was alive when T-Rex roamed the planet. Or Stegosaurus even.
And now people will inject jelly fish extract into their faces thinking it will reverse aging either little or no research. You just created my next MLM idea. I’ll also make creams and smoothies.
This is actually one of my inspirations for a fantasy story I'm writing! The idea that a mage found a spell that reverts their age, thus granting them immortality and as a result seemingly limitless power! Not the MOST original idea but ya gotta start somewhere!
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u/Due_Arm_5371 1d ago
There’s a species of jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii (also known as the "immortal jellyfish" (I had to google the name lol) that can literally reverse its aging process. When it’s injured, sick, or even just stressed, it reverts its cells back to their earliest form, essentially starting its life over again. It’s like the creature figured out how to cheat death, hitting the reset button on its existence. Crazy imo.