RUN! JELLYFISH ARE GOING TO RULE THE WORLD!!!

There are certain things everyone should know about Mother Nature:
1. Some animals are sort of ugly.
2. Animals are trying to kill us.
3. You don't f*ck with Mother Nature. Seriously.

Case in point, Turritopsis nutricula aka the Immortal Jellyfish.

I'm older than Jesus.

WTF is it? Am I going to run into one? Well, it's a jellyfish. Actually it is a hydrozoan, but it's pretty much a jellyfish. They are normally found in warm tropical waters but is believed to spreading because of ships dumping their water in various ports.

What do they do? They are solitary predators...which is boring. The big deal is that they are theoretically immortal. When they become sexually mature, instead of growing old like the rest of us, they revert back to the polyp stage (in other words, they become babies again). The animals do this via transdifferentiation, which is a fancy way of saying that they can change their cells into a different type of cell. This isn't anything special to certain members of the species either. In laboratory studies, 100% of the jellyfish reverted back to this stage.

What does this mean for me? These animals are only 4-5mm long in diameter meaning you probably won't notice them if they were in front of you. However, you might not have noticed THESE THINGS ARE IMMORTAL. So, it's possible they can continue reproducing but never dying. And possibly combine together in a network to make a big godzilla-jellyfish (Jell-zilla) monster who can kill us all. Although they can't do this NOW, the COULD do it later. Evolution, people. It will kill us all. (Except these jellyfish).

Want to read more on this hiccup in the circle of life??:
Turritopsis nutricula: the world's only 'immortal' creature
Cheating Death: The Immortal Life Cycle of Turritopsis