Immortal Jellyfish Defies Evolution

Those other jellyfish get the media attention, what with their bell shapes, lack of brains, deadly stinging tentacles and such. What about the "immortal jellyfish" that scientists call Turritopsis dohrnii? Of course, they are 0.18 inches (4.5 mm) long, so they are difficult to see — but are in pretty much every ocean.

Nothing physical is immortal, but T. dohrnii makes a good try though, barring accidents and such. They essentially regenerate themselves (no word if any carry sonic screwdrivers), reverting to an immature stage. Sometimes they even skip that stage. The process is amazingly complex.

Turritopsis dohrnii, enlarged from Wikimedia Commons / Bachware (CC BY-SA 4.0)

On a side note, it has been said that youth is wasted on the young... Can you imagine starting over as someone much younger but retaining the knowledge you have? Of course, these critters lack brains, so there's not a whole lot of knowledge to draw from as they progress.

Sometimes the jellyfish even skips an immature stage in its reversion and moves onto something else; cells can even transform into different cell types. Also it repairs those caps at the ends of chromosomes called telomeres. Those are similar to the caps on electrical devices to prevent short circuits and shocks. In other living things, telomeres wear down and expose DNA to damage. They can repair these. The whole thing displays the specified complexities in the work of the Creator, giving evolutionists the sads.

Like the phoenix, the tiny ‘immortal jellyfish’ (Turritopsis dohrnii) is able to regenerate itself. When the jellyfish is stressed, injured, or just old, it is able to transform itself from its mature medusa form back into an immature cyst-like form (fig. 1). When conditions improve, it quickly transits from this cyst-like stage back into its young polyp stage once again. Interestingly, in a percentage of cases, the regressing medusa skips this cyst-like stage altogether, to start transforming directly into the first stages of a new hydroid colony.

You can read the full article at "The immortal jellyfish." The short video below shows some footage of the creature and provides a very simple overview of its reversion: