As promised, here's the Immortal Jellyfish.
Turritopsis dohrnii, also known as the immortal jellyfish, is only about 3-5 millimeters long, and can potentially live forever. Please note that I just say potentially, I do not guarantee it in any way. There is a possibility that one of the tiny jellyfish that is floating around in the oceans now, was also floating around with dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but no guarantee because I seriously doubt there is any fossils of these tiny creatures anywhere. They're found in most tropical oceans because they got carried around by humans in ballast tanks and things like that for a while, and they're small. Seriously, stack 2-3 pennies together and the size of the edge of that, is about how big they are. Not the entire pair of pennies, just the thickness.
This picture is from the American Museum of Natural History article below.
A bit of backstory about their immortality though, I need to explain the life cycle of a jellyfish. It's different from most animals I can think of, and a bit weird. So, we'll start with a fertilized egg, which can be a bit more complicated than you'd think since jellyfish are mostly moved by the water around them and can't do a lot to direct themselves, that hatches into a larva, also known as a planula. The planula wanders around for a while until it finds somewhere to latch on and form into a polyp. The polyp then starts 'budding' and grows/releases ephyra that then turn into adult jellyfishes.
Is this a bit weird? Yes.
Are there a few sources below about that so you can understand better? Also yes.
Is there a reason I need to try to explain this? Still yes.
The Immortal Jellyfish, if hurt or stressed, can turn itself from a fully-grown adult into a polyp again.
It also does that after sex, because that's a traumatizing experience apparently.
So, they're still studying this, especially since they only noticed this less than 50 years ago and it takes time for scientists to study this strange lifecycle, but it's still really cool. There are sources below if you want to investigate further, or google if you don't want my sources, or YouTube for cat videos if you don't really care about this at all. Either way, I hope you enjoyed learning of the existence of this strange and tiny creature, and that you have a good day.
Sources:
Science Focus-- Immortal Jellyfish
Natural History Museum-- Immortal Jellyfish
American Museum of Natural History- Immortal Jellyfish
Encyclopedia Britannica- Immortal Jellyfish
Smithsonian-- Oceans-- Jellyfish Life Cycle
Virginia Institute of Marine Science-- Life Cycle of Jellyfish
No comments:
Post a Comment