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Asked by to Thon, Catherine, James, Natalie, Shaylon on 26 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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James Bell answered on 26 Jun 2014:
Deep-sea corals can live for thousands of years but they are kind of cheating as they are made of colonies of lots of tiny coral polyps. Sponges are long-lived but in a similar way
The longest living non-colonial animals live for around 250 years (this includes some whale species, certain tube worms and reptiles like tortoises and turtles)
However, there are a few that are thought to be nearly immortal. The jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, is thought to be functionally immortal because it can revert to a ‘younger’ life stage as part of it’s normal life. This kind of hits a reset button in their cells.
What normally happens in cells is that as they age they can get damaged and start functioning badly or wrong, they are then usually destroyed by the body (or not – which is one of the ways animals can get cancer). In this amazing jellyfish however, this cell-reset feature seems to overcome this ageing process.
We think of this jellyfish as immortal in the sense that there’s no theoretical maximum lifespan it could have but in real life it almost certainly gets eaten or dies because of disease – I guess it’s like the elves in Tolkein’s Middle Earth – they can only die if something kills them 😛
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Shaylon Stolk answered on 26 Jun 2014:
As far as vertebrates go, the oldest was a Aldabra Giant Tortoise who died at 250 years old. But there’s a lot of species of vertebrates that live into their 100’s. Here’s a list of some of the oldest organisms ever for your perusal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms -
Natalie Pilakouta answered on 26 Jun 2014:
I guess James and Shaylon beat me to it!
But the SHORTEST-lived species is the mayfly. Its lifespan ranges from just half an hour to one day, depending on their species! Isn’t that crazy? Basically, their sole purpose in life is to hatch and immediately reproduce, right after which they die.
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