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Biological immortality in plants and animals isn't unheard of. Take Jelly Fish, they are biologically immortal, been around 500 million years, not to bad. The
by throwaway_law 7y ago
Biological immortality in plants and animals isn't unheard of.
Take Jelly Fish, they are biologically immortal, been around 500 million years, not to bad. They were the first animals to evolve nervous systems, not sure the timeline of the biological immortality evolution, but they must have continued evolving because there are different species (some have evolved eyes and others not) and I believe all species are biologically immortal.
- mensetmanusman 7y agoAre you saying there is a floating jelly fish in the ocean that is 500 million years old (‘years old’ in the common parlance of usage)?
- skosch 7y agoThe life/reproduction cycle of jellyfish makes it difficult to talk about "common parlance" age. Someone even made a website about it: https://immortal-jellyfish.com/ https://immortal-jellyfish.com/
- djrogers 7y agoHighly unlikely - statistically speaking, predation and disease would kill any individual specimen long before 500M year passed. That said, there are ‘immortal jellyfish’ that do not die of aging - don’t worry about an uprising though, they can be killed! [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii
- throwaway_law 7y ago>predation and disease would kill any individual specimen long before 500M year passed. Only via predators. The immortal Jellyfish not only don't die from aging, they don't generally die of disease, starvation, temperature changes or any other stresses...in fact it is those stresses that trigger their reversion from sexual maturity to biologically rewind to a polyp colony where they begin the start of their life cycle all over. I tend to agree statistically speaking it seems highly unlikely, but its such a bizarre thought experiment, I can wind up concluding it is statistically highly unlikely there isn't Jellyfish in the wild that are older than the dinosaurs. Unfortunately, we can't age these Jellyfish.
- throwaway_law 7y agoThe way it works, to our understanding, is these immortal Jellyfish his sexual maturity and have offspring, or another for of stress (starvation, temperature change, attack, etc...) and they revert from sexual maturity to a polyp stage and restart the life cycle, and unless they are killed they continue this cycle in perpetuity. Unfortunately we can't age these Jelly fish or even confirm they have undergone the reversion transformation process (except under lab observation). So while I am not saying yes, a single jelly fish has lived the entire 500 million years, its certainly possible and the idea behind biological immortality. Maybe one day we can figure out a way to age them and find some older than the dinosaurs.