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Turritopsis dohrnii, also known as the immortal jellyfish, is a species of small, biologically immortal jellyfish [2] [3] found worldwide in temperate to tropic waters. It is one of the few known cases of animals capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary individual.
Despite only being only three millimetres in diameter on average, adult versions of these tiny invertebrates have a huge party trick: they can roll back their biological clock when injured or on the verge of starvation. This means, in theory, they could live forever.
It has been dubbed the immortal jellyfish. When the medusa of this species is physically damaged or experiences stresses such as starvation, instead of dying it shrinks in on itself, reabsorbing its tentacles and losing the ability to swim. It then settles on the seafloor as a blob-like cyst.
Turritopsis dohrnii, the so-called "immortal jellyfish," can hit the reset button and revert to an earlier developmental stage if it is injured or otherwise threatened. Like all jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii begins life as a larva, called a planula, which develops from a fertilized egg.
When an immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) grows old or damaged, the species can evade death by reverting to a baby polyp stage. It does so by reabsorbing its tentacles and coming to rest as a blob of undifferentiated cells somewhere on the seafloor.
It’s not just the immortal jellyfish that can rise from its own ashes. In 2011, a marine biology student in China kept a moon jellyfish (aurelia aurita) in a tank. When it died, he kept the body in another tank. Three months later, a new tiny polyp was growing out the top of the moon jellyfish.
The immortal jellyfish is a species of tiny, translucent, jellyfish-like invertebrate animals of the phylum Cnidaria, which is renowned for its ability to evade death by cycling repeatedly between its polyp and medusa forms.
In the warm seas of the Mediterranean lives a jellyfish with an extraordinarily rare ability – it can rewind its life cycle. The so-called ‘immortal’ jellyfish, or Turritopsis dohrnii, can somehow reprogramme the identity of its own cells, returning it to an earlier stage of life.
Known as the immortal jellyfish, Turritopsis Dohrnii's can live forever — and scientists are working to see if they can apply its properties to humans. A fountain of youth exists, and a tiny species of jellyfish can be found swimming around in its eternal waters.
A very specific jellyfish to be exact: the Turritopsis dohrnii, which is more commonly, and aptly, called the immortal jellyfish. Discovered in the Mediterranean in 1883, this hydrozoan has been stumping scientists with its ability to outlast death ever since.