This is the first piece in a series of articles called “Animals Untold”. This article is about a creature that theoretically can’t die!
The Immortal Jellyfish sounds like something with a funny name that doesn’t mean much, but these animals can’t get old. They are about the size of your pinky fingernail- at just about 4.5 millimeters! If these tiny jellyfish get hurt or run out of food, they shrink. To shrink itself, it makes its tentacles go in on itself, and goes down to the sea floor to become just a little circle on the ocean floor. In the next 24-36 days, they turn to their previous life stage, also known as a Polyp. These jellyfish, also known as Turritopsis dohrnii, can die, but not typically from old age or starvation. They can, however, die if a predator kills them or if they get sick.
Immortal Jellyfish don’t look for food like most animals; they will eat whatever little creatures are floating around them, such as plankton, fish eggs, and larvae. They only have one opening for digestive processes. They use their toxic tentacles to kill their prey before they eat it. Scientists believe that these jellyfish come from the Pacific, but they can attach themselves to cargo ships. They have ended up in many different places because of this. They have been around before dinosaurs, so moving around on cargo ships is a new form of travel for them.
The Immortal Jellyfish isn’t really immortal, but they can cheat death by creating a new body for themselves. This new body is the same as the old, but the features make the jellyfish survive better. They can die, making them not totally immortal, but they can make themselves younger. They don’t have any skeleton or brain, but can move up to 7 miles per hour.
These jellyfish do have predators that can kill them, and they can’t come back to life. These predators include sharks, sea turtles, tuna, jellyfish, and sea anemones. Penguins and crustaceans like crabs are also predators of the Immortal Jellyfish. They will eat other jellyfish, and other jellyfish will eat them.
Immortal jellyfish are very interesting animals that are very important to the whole ecosystem. Even though they theoretically can’t live forever, they are almost immortal.