Human beings have been searching for immortality for millennia. The alchemists not only dedicated themselves to pursuing a recipe that would allow them to transform worthless substances into gold , but they were also determined to find the “elixir of life” or “elixir of immortality”: a liquid that was capable of creating life. and, in addition, grant immortality to anyone who was already alive when he took it.
Human beings (and the vast majority of animals) are not immortal (not even close) because, the older we get, the less likely we are to survive another year due to complications related to the deterioration of health that accompanies age.
Basically, the problem is that the longer the cells in our body have been dividing to form new cells, the worse they do. But, to the envy of alchemists, evolution has ensured that some species do not age. And he has achieved it without resorting to strange potions.
A curious example is that of lobsters, which not only do not lose their physical capacities with age, but they even become more fertile and, in addition, they do not stop growing. In theory, lobsters can only die hunted, due to disease or complications during the shedding of their shells, but not because their bodies deteriorate over time.
In fact, the oldest lobster ever found is estimated to be about 140 years old .
This characteristic is called “negligible senescence” and it is also present in some types of turtle, the red sea urchin, the Antarctic mussel, the long-lived pine, the fish of the species Sebastes aleutianus and some salamanders.
But there is a species that has taken the issue of immortality to much more ambitious terrain.
The queens of longevity are the jellyfish of the Turritopsis dhornii species, which have the unusual ability to return to their polyp state (the “larval state” of this animal) when they notice that their life is in danger, either because they are under some kind of environmental pressure or because they are injured, sick … Or simply too old. During this process, its old cells fully regenerate and become cells of other types , so the jellyfish reemerges from this state completely rejuvenated and ready to live another life.
In theory these jellyfish could continue this cycle indefinitely and would theoretically be immortal. Or at least that would happen in a place where they had no predators.
