You can you just have to be a hydrozoan jellyfish.
It appears that Turritopsis nutricula may indeed be Earth's only immortal creature. (Note: The photo features a similar hydrozoan jelly, the giant bell jelly, Scrippsia pacifica.)
The key lies in T. nutricula's life cycle, which (as with other jellies) is quite different from the stages of most other animals. Jellies exist both as free-swimming adult medusae -- the versions with tentacles that we're familiar with -- and as anemone-like polyps, stalked creatures like jellies' anemone and coral relatives.
Typically, adult medusae produce larvae that settle and grow into polyps. The polyps then bud off new jellies that grow into adult medusae, and the cycle begins again.
Apparently T. nutricula can reverse the process -- changing back to the immature polyp stage after growing into the adult medusa. (Hence the potential for immortality)
Now that we have discovered immortality let's move on the bigger mystery, why can we not understand women?
via: montereybayaquarium
-AL
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