Immortal Invaders Infect World's Oceans

The rock star mantra of "live fast, die young" works in reverse too - you can trade off enjoyment for endurance.  Don't smoke, drink or eat meat and you can extend your life by decades, though what you're going to do with all that time is another question.  Now it seems that an animal has taken this to the logical extreme, and can live forever - the only drawback being it lives forever as a small clump of jelly.

The Hydrozoan, a small predatory sea creature like a jellyfish but without all their well known exciting higher functions, can achieve the dream of millions and become a child again.  When adverse environmental conditions threaten death it can collapse into a rugged blob of cells to survive.  When it re-emerges, it does so as a child - literally building itself up all over again.  Since this isn't just a shell to hide in, but a complete structural restart, it seems possible that it could keep this up forever.

Since one of these adverse environmental conditions is "getting sucked into the ballast tanks of a freighter", the hardy hitchhiker has spread all over the globe.  It possesses stingers and eats things, which are definitely qualities you don't want in something that's unkillable and spreading worldwide, but if you're larger than a shrimp you're still safe.  If you are currently smaller than a shrimp, get Rick Moranis to block the laser and try to be in a better comedy next time.

We aren't in any immediate danger of knock-on effects either, as the jetsetting jellyfish-ettes seem to be integrating quite harmlessly into their new homes (though some shrimp might disagree).  The rather damp phoenix-stylings of the hydrozoan have obviously made them a hot topic in genetics, but don't expect to buy your immortality pills just yet - this is one life extension option that isn't even remotely applicable to humans.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Immortal Invader

Comments

[Papawhale]

Doomed by a jellyfish...what next?

[Marty Ferguson]

The article said '...we aren't in any immediate danger...', nothing about being doomed. This thing can't threaten us unless it grows to twice the average human size and crawls (or walks) out of the oceans and starts attacking us!

[Alex Cassell]

To the last commenter; It doesn't have to be huge to negatively affect us. If they eat to many of the native species it could cause the ecosystem to crash or at the very least change, and that would quite certainly effect us.

[...]

Hmm... I researched this before (sortof). A while back I made a theory that if an organism is simple enough and it somehow has a 'clumping effect', that is, it can transform into a ball of slime that can regenerate itself back to its child-form, it can live forever (yes, I actually thought af something as whacky and wayward s that). I never really thought it would/was/have actually been present in nature though... Spooky.

I still think more research should be done on this, because people're not(underline:sure) if it is infinite. Maybe,like cell division and other random things that would have been thought to be infinite, it has a cap. For example: in the human body, a single cell can only divide 59 or so times.

[...]

Hmm... I researched this before (sortof). A while back I made a theory that if an organism is simple enough and it somehow has a 'clumping effect', that is, it can transform into a ball of slime that can regenerate itself back to its child-form, it can live forever (yes, I actually thought af something as whacky and wayward s that). I never really thought it would/was/have actually been present in nature though... Spooky.

I still think more research should be done on this, because people're not(underline:sure) if it is infinite. Maybe,like cell division and other random things that would have been thought to be infinite, it has a cap. For example: in the human body, a single cell can only divide 59 or so times.

[hjhall7]

Yeah, somehow immortality doesn't sound so great if you end up in a pile of jelly and have to keep starting over. I wouldn't want to be a child or adolescent again for anything. Additionally, we all play a part in the food chain; should all the shrimp disappear, what would be next? And what of the other species that also hope to feed on shrimp. What of them? Do they adapt or die out? We all know that even a small alteration in the food chain has consequences and ripples. Shrimp seem small, but small doesn't mean unimportant. Hitchhiking all over the globe on tankers, then happily adapting in their new home is more than a little unsettling. Pretty minor, perhaps, with so many other, more pressing things around us, but sometimes it's these little, inconsequential things that can sneak in when we're preoccupied elsewhere with the big stuff. My first question would be this: If these hydrozoans are seemingly immortal, are they still reproducing? One would certainly think so. So if that is the case, imagine the oceans eventually full to exploding with immortal bags of slime with stingers. So I'll pass on an immortality pill, slime or not.

[Marty Ferguson]

If I could retain all my experiences while physically regressing...well, what unhappily married man WOULDN'T want to be 'reborn'?

M