The Sea Anemone: The lowly sea anemone doesn't look like an immortal animal. In fact, it doesn't even look like an animal. In between swaying to the left, swaying to the right, and occasionally swallowing a bit of debris, this brainless polyp is busy defying everything we know about mortality. A sea anemone doesn't age as it gets older; it simply grows bigger. Fortunately for those who find this a little creepy, none of them have lived long enough to develop sentience yet-- they get wiped out at around age 80 by heat, water pollution, infections and greedy collectors.
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The Lobster: Like the sea anemone, the lobster is an immortal animal. It has no brain, and its central nevous system is about as simple as a common household insect. But lobsters have somehow figured out a way to defy aging as we know it. Unlike people, lobsters don't experience any change in metabolism or body-function as they get older. A one-hundred-year-old lobster will even continue eating, moving and making baby-lobsters without any sense of shame. They also keep getting bigger-- meaning that, after a couple-hundred years, they can be the size of a wolf, and capable of scaring the living daylights out of anyone.
The Hydra: The hydra is a nearly microscopic immortal animal, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in stamina. (You probably know at least a handful of men who use the same excuse with with their girlfriends.) Hydras are actually remarkably efficient predators; they release an explosion of neurotoxins into their prey, paralyze it, and then consume the animal whole. Every single cell in the hydra's tiny body is constantly dividing and rejuvenating, so any injured, polluted or defective cells are diluted by the thousands of others. Because they are constantly replenishing their living cells, hydras do not age at all-- ever.
Immortality doesn't truly exist in practice, but, in theory, any of these immortal animals really coulld manage to live forever. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us) environmental conditions do eventually destroy every living "immortal" animal.
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