immortal jellyfish

Humans have always sought for a way to obtain eternal life since we achieved developed brain. People made a lot of tales and superstitions about obtaining eternal life and scientists repeated trial and error for thousands of years. In 1991, the discovery of an immortal jellyfish created a big sensation among scientists. Jellyfish is an adult form of the creature and the baby form is called polyp and polyp is adhering on rocks on the bottom of the sea. This new discovered jellyfish can return to the stage of polyp after reproduction while others die and disappear in water. It is not really eternal life in the sense of living forever, but after aging they return to baby and repeat life again with the same body and DNA. It is said that they can live forever if there are no predators and the biggest number of reviving process observed is ten times at the laboratory in Kyoto, Japan. The research for eternal life has proceeded a lot after the discovery and it is said that one day, humans CAN obtain eternal life by biotechnology of genetic modification.

horseshoe crab

Horseshoe crab is an animal that belongs to the group, arthropod, which insects, spiders, and shrimps also belong to. Horseshoe crab is well known to many people because they have existed on earth since Paleozoic era and never changed their shape and lifestyle.
The surprising fact is that their blood is very helpful for human medical world. Their blood color is blue because they use copper for circulating oxygen inside body instead of iron like red blood animals like us. Since their blue magical blood is very sensitive to bacterial toxins, it can be applied to find toxins inside human body. The most important function is when their blood meets toxins, the blood components react and form gel. This reaction is a unique ability of horseshoe crab blood so many researchers and companies are already utilizing them for hospitals in the United States.
Although it seems there are only benefits for humans, indiscriminate hunting is becoming a big problem of ecosystem. There are some research ongoing to create artificial component in place of horseshoe crab blood to save this wonderful ancient animal.

water bear

Have you ever heard about water bears? It is a very small animal which belongs to a group called tardigrada (meaning slow-moving creature). Usually you cannot see them with your naked eyes, but they are everywhere. It's actually EVERYWHERE, including wet land, dry land, pond water, the bottom of the ocean, near crater, and around you. You may think that they are a little cute when you see them by using microscopes because of their slow movements and chunky appearance.
The surprising fact of water bears is that they are the strongest living creature in the world. They are not strong in the way that they can push something really heavy, or have extremely poisonous toxins, but they can endure any kinds of severe environment which all the other livings cannot survive. For example, they can endure extreme dryness, about 150 degrees Celsius to the absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius), vacuum space to 70,000 atmospheric pressure, and also many kinds of radioactive rays! Isn't it bizarre that there is an animal which can even live in the space!? They developed a living strategy called Cryptobiosis to live in any environment.
Another surprising fact which was found recently, is they possess genes from many life groups such as bacteria, fungi, plant, archaea, and virus even though water bears belong to animal kingdom. It is still a mystery of biology and more studies are required to clarify the ability. Because water bears have genes from different life groups and the immortality, humans may find the way to obtain "eternal life".