Turritopsis Dohrnii
A quiet kind of immortality
A couple of months ago, during a school week, my daughters Lola and Lara were doing their homework. Sometimes we do a 10-minute dictation where we pick and interesting topic from one of the books on our bookshelf. This time, we picked a book called Animalium. We chose the “Immortal Jellyfish” page. Since then, I can’t stop thinking about it.
I’ve had crazy dreams about this sea creature telling me its ‘eternal life’ secrets. In my dreams, I am also a sea creature, but I can’t really breathe underwater, so when the jellyfish talks to me, I only have limited time to listen.
The Turritopsis dohrnii is a tiny jellyfish found in oceans from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean. It belongs to the coral and anemone family - creatures already known for regeneration - but this one takes it further.
Its life moves in cycles: a larva becomes a polyp, the polyp releases young jellyfish, they mature, reproduce, and repeat. But if threatened, it does something astonishing - it reverses. After reproducing, it reverts to earlier stages, settling once more as a polyp on the ocean floor.
A quiet kind of immortality.
If you’re reading this and know more about it, please educate me, because, in my ignorance, I find it fascinating.
After some research, I came cross Shin Kubota, a Japanese scientist whose purpose is to study this jellyfish. For Professor Shin Kubota, the immortal jellyfish is “the most wonderful dream of mankind”. He dedicates his life to studying them, believing their secret might one day be understood - and even applied to us.
But he worries. That even if we solve the mystery, we won’t be ready. That we’re still too destructive, too disconnected, to hold immortality with care.
As I’m watching videos about Shin Kubota and the T. dohrnii, I find myself mesmerised by this: “When one jellyfish regenerates itself, it doesn’t become just une polyp. It puts down roots and clones itself hundreds of times. It becomes a team of identical polyps.” This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend about us being “infinite and minuscule” (this friend is probably reading this and smiling).
What would you do if you had unlimited chances to restart your life?
In one of his songs (The Immortal Jellyfish Festival Song), Kubota says: “I can live my life ever again, but since people only live once… please live without any regrets.” I guess that for Kubota, his relationship with the jellyfish is so intrinsic and philosophical/scientific that his research goes beyond our understanding. But for me, and probably for many of you, it’s more existential. It makes us think about life and death. About the beauty of knowing our time is limited and that’s what makes it precious.
In my never-ending list of movie ideas, one of them is a dystopian story where half of the population knows their date of death, and the other half doesn’t. (If this movie already exists, please send me the info. If not, please let me know if you’d like me to tell you more about it). This movie is not about immortality, it’s about our relationship with death, which has been studied for ages by many, many people.
The interesting thing bout this jellyfish is that even though they’re considered immortal, they can still be killed - by a predator, by disease, by the randomness of the sea. What sets them apart isn’t invincibility, but the fact that they don’t age. Left disturbed, they simply reset. Begin again.
Experiments have shown that all stages of the Turritopsis dohrnii - from newly released to fully grown - can turn back into polyps when faced with starvation, sudden temperature changes, drops in salinity, or even physical damage to its bell. This ability to reverse its life cycle in response to tough conditions is unique in the animal kingdom. It allows the jellyfish to avoid death, making it potentially biologically immortal.
Maybe one of the things we can learn from it is that the drive for becoming young again is not vain, but purely curiosity about being alive. We could learn how to restart on our own terms and with our limited abilities.
On an ending note, I will forever be thankful for people like Shin. The fact that he writes and performs songs about his subject of study (wearing a jellyfish costume…my heart!), his drive and creative curiosity brought tears to my eyes and reaffirmed that there is definitely beauty everywhere.
Te quiero mucho!
Sina