Earth’s longest living animal
Earth’s longest-living animal is Turritopsis dohrnii, a jellyfish. The jelly fish can completely escape from death. Due to its cell transformation ability, they can go back an earlier stage of their life cycle when injured or on the verge of starvation. This means they could live forever.
The immortal jellyfish is almost invisible and resembles a tiny ice cube. Its body is bell-shaped and transparent with a height of 0.18 inches and a diameter from 0.18 up to 0.4 inches. It has a large bright-red stomach and has a cruciform shape in cross section. Internally, it has a hydrostatic skeleton called a mesoglea which has a jellylike substance mostly consisting of water, and it is consistently thin except for the apex. The epidermis (skin) in the cap has dense nerve cells which form a large ring-like structure above the radical canal, a common feature of cnidarians. Younger immortal jellyfish are 0.04 inches in size and have 8 tentacles, while adult ones can have 80-90 tentacles. The tentacles are white in colour.
There are physical differences depending on the water in which they live, although they are all the same species. For example, there are 8 tentacles for people living in tropical waters, while there are 24 or more tentacles in more temperate waters.
These small transparent animals mostly found in tropical regions all around the world. Their diet consists of plankton, fish eggs, larvae, small molluscs and brine shrimp. Its predators are jellyfish, sea anemones, tuna, sharks, swordfish, sea turtles, penguins and various fish.
Immortal jellyfish reproduce sexually and asexually, but it is not hermaphroditic. The sexually mature medusa stage reproduces by the spawning and fertilization of eggs with sperm, while the sexually immature polyps reproduce by budding. It is the unique life cycle with transformation back into the polyp state that can result in so many genetically identical offspring and no limit on lifespan. The regeneration process is called “transdifferentiation”.
In sexual reproduction, the sperm fertilize the eggs, after which the egg develops. The jellyfish hatch as larvae, called planula, and swim out on their own. Helping to propel them through the water are small hairs called cilia which are on their tiny oval-shaped bodies. After a few days, the planula larvae settle on the sea floor by attach themselves to a rock. Then grows into a cylindrical colony of polyps, which become a parent hydroid colony of genetically identical, free-swimming medusae through spawning. The offspring grow into adults in a matter of weeks.
The immortal jellyfish have massive populations that are genetically identical but predators reduce their population to smaller levels and preventing them from actually attaining immortality.
- Immortal Jelly fish Also known as Benjamin Button Jellyfish
- Thuridopsis dohrni was first discovered in 1883 in the Mediterranean Sea
- There is only one species of indestructible jellyfish. However, there are more than 2,000 jellyfish
- The age of the oldest immortal jellyfish is unknown
- It is the only jellyfish species that does not remain in the last stage, called the Medusa stage, until death
- If it starves or gets sick in its immature polyp state, it cannot regenerate and will die
- The species is also found in the Atlantic Ocean side of Panama, Spain and Japan. It spread throughout the world after being trapped in the ballast waters of long-distance cargo ships
- Immortal jellyfish can sting, but they are not poisonous
- The Hydra is another immortal cnidarian which lives in freshwater
- The maximum speed of the immortal jellyfish is 4.97 mph
- Gestation period takes place within 2-3days
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