Who Wants to Live Forever

There are many ways to extend one’s life: some engage in sports and avoid harmful habits, others stick to a healthy diet, some move from large, polluted cities to environmentally clean areas, and some closely follow cutting-edge science, hoping not to miss the epoch-making moment when scientists finally discover the elixir of immortality. After all, they are getting closer and closer, and one of the main sources of hope is found in certain animal species that seem to have devised several ways to cheat nature.

Let’s focus on some fascinating sea and underground creatures that, if not holding the secret to eternal youth, certainly know a few life-extension hacks that could be useful to us humans.

Immortality in Three Dimensions

What do people who worry about their short and fleeting lives do? Like masochists, they constantly watch clocks and calendars, which only increases their anxieties. Meanwhile, one small marine organism, Hydra vulgaris (also known as a ‘cousin of the jellyfish’), knows very well that if you want to live long, you must exist in three dimensions and simply forget about the fourth – time. This is the conclusion of an experiment by American scientist Daniel Martinez, who observed a laboratory hydra for 12 years and noted no signs of aging. It seems the hydra is simply unaware of the existence of time, which eventually catches up with every living organism on the planet.

The hydra can indeed die from disease or be eaten by a predator, but in ideal laboratory conditions, where it receives nourishing food from a pipette, it lives merrily, with no need for Botox injections, always looking like an 18-year-old model on the runway. Martinez’s hydra eventually died of starvation after the scientist, exhausted by more than a decade of watching an unchanging scene in his petri dish, took a long vacation and could no longer feed it.

It’s still unclear whether Hydra vulgaris has truly discovered the secret of immortality, but its striking ability to appear eternally youthful seems linked to a body made up of unique cells that regenerate more readily than even human heart cells. In fact, every 20 days, the hydra completely replaces all its cells with new, identical ones.

Genetic Repair Kit

When choosing a new car, you probably consider the availability of spare parts. If you know that any needed replacement part is readily accessible, it can significantly influence your decision. Now, if you were choosing not a car but a living organism for life’s journey, the Somniosus microcephalus, or Greenland shark, might be an excellent choice. This queen of cold polar waters boasts a large genome packed with many duplicate genes. This feature is highly convenient: if something breaks, there’s a spare part on hand. What’s more, these duplicates play a role in DNA repair and cancer suppression. No wonder that in 2016, when scientists examined the eye lenses of 28 Greenland sharks, they found that some specimens were born 400 years ago – or even over 500.

The Rejuvenation Loop

Imagine a woman reaching the age of 35, having given birth to two children, who decides to start anew and, with a snap of her fingers, reverts to being a girl who hasn’t even reached sexual maturity. Some would say that such a biological phenomenon is impossible, but that would be overlooking Turritopsis dohrnii, a fascinating jellyfish studied by scientists in their search for immortality. These jellyfish undergo several stages of development. They begin as tiny larvae, soon settle on the seabed to form a colony of polyps with other babies, awaiting maturity, after which they ‘bud off’ as independent adults – the jellyfish.

These creatures have a remarkable trick: when unfavourable environmental conditions arise (a sudden food shortage, a sharp drop in temperature, or changes in water salinity), a jellyfish that has already produced the next generation can revert to a sexually immature polyp state. Daniel Martinez suggests that this ability to start life anew occurs through regeneration into a new cluster of cells, similar to self-cloning. Thanks to unique genes, this cycle can theoretically repeat indefinitely.

Underground Slow Living

Travellers in Africa may have seen porcupines that live up to 28 years – an impressive age for rodents. But you don’t need to travel that far to meet a rodent that has struck a deal with Death to stay away for as long as possible. In the eastern steppes of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea region, and northern Caspian Sea areas lives the mole rat, or Spalax microphthalmus, which can reach up to 40 years of age. People often claim they’re unafraid of death, only fearing the suffering and illness that often precede it. Mole rats, however, not only live long lives but also maintain excellent health until the end. First, underground life means they are in no hurry – they breathe slowly and have a reduced metabolism. Secondly, scientists have noted their extraordinary ability to inhibit the growth of cancer cells at an early stage.

Tortoises Against Animal Rights Activists

Environmentalists and animal rights activists have inadvertently killed many animals by forcing their release from zoos into the wild, where survival is far tougher. There, no one serves up tasty meals on schedule, and veterinarians aren’t available to provide swift care when needed. For a long time, it was hard to prove that zoos positively impact longevity until 2022, when researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany studied 50 turtle species. They found a fascinating fact: three-quarters of the subjects showed almost no signs of aging, and even more intriguing – these were the three-quarters kept in zoos and aquariums. Wild turtles were much more worn by life. So, every turtle in the world knows that ending up in a zoo is like hitting the jackpot. Similarly, people who want to live a long, quality life aim to move to countries where conditions are optimised. If you want to live long, improve your environment.

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being

Lobsters might live forever if it weren’t for their continuous growth. They grow throughout their lives, and it’s ultimately what kills them. In the 100-plus years typical for lobsters, they reach enormous sizes (for example, the world record lobster weighed nearly 20 kilograms). The issue is that while lobsters age very slowly, their exoskeleton, which they regularly shed, gets larger, making it increasingly difficult to moult. And then, a new, larger shell must grow. At some point, each lobster reaches a stage where it dies, not so much from old age, but simply from being too tired to live.