Immortal Jellyfish: Description, Types, Pictures, & Fun Facts

Immortal Jellyfish: All You Need To Know

The Immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) is an omnivorous fish that belongs to the Animalia family, phylum Cnidaria, class Hydrozoa, order Anthoathecata, and family Oceaniidae. Its genus is Turritopsis. The Immortal jellyfish ranges in size from up to 0.18 inches in length, and weight is unknown, with an immortal lifetime.

Immortal jellyfish are saltwater fish that eat tiny sea creatures. Immortal jellyfish are preyed upon by larger jellyfish, sea anemones, tuna, sharks, swordfish, sea turtles, and penguins. The ability to regenerate is a distinguishing characteristic.

Physical characteristics include the smooth skin. The immortal jellyfish, also recognised as the Benjamin Button jellyfish, is among the few kinds of organisms that can rejuvenate and live indefinitely, as well as the only jellyfish species that can.

It was found within the Mediterranean in 1883. However, until the mid-1990s, researchers and scientists were inattentive of their power to morph.

It goes back to a sexually immature stage after reproducing, also as when it’s hurt, starved, or dies. It can only die when it is consumed as food, being taken out of the water, or contracting a sickness.

3 Incredible Immortal Jellyfish Facts!

1. The age of the eldest immortal jellyfish is uncertain.

2. It’s really the only jellyfish species that doesn’t die in the final stage, known as the Medusa stage.

3. The process of reguvenate is known as “transdifferentiation,” and it happens when the jellyfish’s cells develop into juvenile polyps.

4. On the Atlantic Ocean side of Panama, Spain, and Japan, the species has also been discovered. After becoming captured in the ballast waters of long-distance ocean freight ships, it has spread over the world.

5. It cannot regenerate and will die if it is starved or unwell in its young condition, when it is known as a polyp.

Immortal Jellyfish Classification and Scientific Name

Turritopsis dohrnii is the scientific name for the eternal jellyfish. It is not a genuine jellyfish, that belongs to the class Scyphozoa, not Hydrozoa, despite being in the Cnidaria family. Turritopsis nutricula Many additional jellyfish species were previously categorised as Turritopsis nutricula.

August Friedrich Leopold Weismann, a German marine science student, named it in 1883. It’s also labeled to as the Benjamin Button jellyfish because of its cell metamorphosis capacity, which permits it to revert to an immature stage.

Turritopsis rubra and Nemopsis bachei are nearly related species. Only one type of eternal jellyfish exists. Jellyfish, on the opposite hand, number over 2,000 species.

Immortal Jellyfish Appearance

The eternal jellyfish is almost imperceptible, sort of a little cube. It has a bell-shaped, translucent body with dimensions 0.18 inches tall and 0.18 to 0.4 inches in diameter, making it smaller than a pinky nail. It has a huge, brilliant crimson stomach with a cruciform shape in cross section.

Internally, it contains a hydrostatic skeleton termed a mesoglea, which features a jellylike structure largely made from water and is consistently thin except at the apex, like other jellyfish. Dense nerve cells create a big ring-like structure above the radical canal in the epidermis (skin) of the cap, which is a frequent characteristic of cnidarians.

Younger immortal jellyfish possess 8 tentacles and are 0.04 inches long, but matured have 80-90 tentacles. The tentacles possess a white colour to them. It consists of stolons (stems) and upright branches with feeding polyps capable of generating medusa buds in its juvenile polyp condition.

Its polyp form, also referred to as a hydroid, dwells on the ocean bottom . Polyps evolve into tiny 0.039-inch medusae that go free and are solitary after a couple of days within the parent hydroid colony. The hydroid with many polyps is a rare sight in most jellyfish.

On the other hand, morphological variances exist based on the waterways that they inhabit, despite the fact that they are of the same species. Those that sleep in tropical seas, for instance, have eight tentacles, whereas those that sleep in more temperate waters have 24 or more.

Immortal Jellyfish Distribution, Population, and Habitat

The size of the eternal jellyfish’s population is unknown. The Mediterranean was the primary place where it had been found. It, on the opposite hand, survives in tropical and temperate coastal locations across the planet, having spread by hitchhiking within the ballast water of long-distance cargo ships. Warm water is its preferred environment, and it has been discovered on both the ocean’s floor and at the top, like other jellyfish.

Immortal Jellyfish Predators and Prey

The immortal jellyfish’s regular diet consists of any smaller species it may ingest quietly as a hydroid on the bottom of the ocean with any wandering prey, or actively hunting and employing its stinging tentacles because it floats through the water.

It feeds totally on plankton, fish eggs, larvae, and Artemia salina, with bigger jellyfish, sea anemones, tuna, sharks, swordfish, sea turtles, and penguins serving as predators.

The eternal jellyfish has vast populations that are genetically identical, and that they undergo tremendous population booms like other jellyfish species. Predation lowers the dimensions of their population.

Immortal Jellyfish Reproduction and Lifespan

Immortal jellyfish procreate in both sexual and asexual ways, although they are not hermaphroditic. Sexually mature medusas reproduce by spawning and fertilising eggs with sperm, whereas sexually immature polyps multiply through budding.

It’s the unusual life cycle, which incorporates reverting to a polyp condition, that permits for such an outsized number of genetically identical children and a vast longevity.

The sperm fertilise the eggs in amphimixis following which the egg develops. Planula are the type of jellyfish larvae that hatch and swim out on their own. Cilia, microscopic hairs present on their tiny, oval-shaped bodies, assist in dwelling them through the water.

After a few days, the planula larvae move to the bottom of the ocean and attach themselves to a rock, signalling the start of the next stage of the life cycle. They are subsequently transformed into a cylindrical colony of polyps, which through spawning turn into a parent hydroid colony of genetically identical, free-swimming medusae.

In a period of weeks, the children mature into adults. Mostly in confinement, not in the water, have scientists and researchers been able to watch the immortal jellyfish’s transition. However, keeping two animals in captivity at the same time is difficult.

So far, just one scientist, Shin Kubota of Kyoto University, has been ready to maintain a gaggle together for an extended length of your time. The immortal jellyfish’s capacity to regenerate is based on the transition of its cells into sexually immature forms.

It doesn’t have an outlined lifetime like other jellyfish species due to its unusual life cycle. The gene identified to be accountable for its modification in mitochondrial DNA (mRNA) is stage-specific in medusae and expresses itself tenfold more than in other stages of the life cycle.

Immortal Jellyfish in Fishing and Cooking

Although jellyfish are edible and bigger species are consumed, notably in Asian nations, the immortal jellyfish is not considered a pet and is not utilised in cooking owing to its small size.