| json_metadata | "{"app":"Musing","appTags":["animal","question"],"appCategory":"animal","appTitle":"Is it true that jellyfish are immortal?","appBody":"<p>It depends on how you define immortality. As @paulanii has already said, there are some species of jellyfish that has the ability to revert from their adult life form back into polyps (and subsequently hydra and then medusa) again if they are injured or something like that. </p>\n<p>Once the medusa life form reverts back to a poly, its cells are transformed, and the process can remind you of stem cells in humans and other mammals. Once it is a polyp, it's time to challenge your definition of an individual, because at this stage the jellyfish will create hundreds of polyps, all genetically identical, so they are technically the same individual. Theoretically all of these can grown to become adult jellyfish, and all of them are still considered a single individual due to their 100 % identic DNA. </p>\n<p>So do you consider this animal to be immortal? Some do, others don't. The big argument against it is that it's not really able to live forever, it's more like it's reverting back to a fetus-like stage and re-develops for yet another cycle. </p>\n<p><br></p>","appDepth":2,"appParentPermlink":"fkpd8tbdx","appParentAuthor":"elprutest","musingAppId":"aU2p3C3a8N","musingAppVersion":"1.1","musingPostType":"answer"}" |
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