The cycle of life and death extends not only to humans and plants but to animals as well. Some organisms tend to have a lifespan similar to humans while others only have a lifespan of up to 48 hours and others can live up to a hundred years. Sea turtles can live up to a hundred years while the mayfly can only live from a few hours up to a week.
Each animal and organism have a different lifespan and all of them contribute to the ecology of the animal and plant kingdom. Some have a shorter life due to disease, death, or becoming food to another organism. This cycle of life and death will continue.
But, there is one organism that is exempted from this brutal cycle. This organism itself can live freely as long as it does not get eaten. This means that this one organism can live forever or as long as it takes. Find out which is the longest living organism in the world.
The longest living organism can live eternally if it wants to. This is because it is deemed as the immortal organism. The immortal jellyfish is the longest living organism as long as it does not fall victim to its predators.
It is a species of small jellyfish that is commonly found in the Mediterranean and in the coastal waters of Japan. The organism is unique in terms of its life cycle hence it is called the immortal jellyfish.
The organism is capable of reverting itself to its colonial stage after it has reached its sexual maturity. This means that the immortal jellyfish can go back to being a baby when it reaches adulthood and can repeat its cycle over and over until it gets eaten by its predator. Once the jellyfish reaches the height of sexual maturity, it then reverts back to its polyps stage and begins another life.
The Immortal Jellyfish begin their life as tiny larvae called planula. It then swims around freely into a colony of polyps that belongs to the same species.
Once they reach their jellyfish state, they become sexually mature and the process of reversion begins. All of the polyps and jellyfish inside a colony are genetically identical clones as well. This means that they are simply carbon copies of each other.
In theory, the process of reverting back to its baby stage can go on forever. But, most of the time the jellyfish would either fall victim to disease long before they reach adulthood or become prey to predators.
What Do I Think
This method of immortality has inspired scientists to seek out methods of extracting such ability to revert back to its early stage in life. This has led to different studies on how to make stem cells use this kind of process in order to renew damaged or dead tissues in human bodies. It won’t be long before someone is able to breakthrough and use it to cure different diseases as well as live forever.