Reversing its aging process when it gets sick or is wounded, the small Japanese Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish is the only known animal that has figured out how to defeat death.

Motherboard went to Japan to learn about the researcher who studies these microscopic animals to see if humans could one day do the same.
At sea, these animals are in fact immortal, but in the laboratory are much more fickle-die if they are burned, removed from the water or eat.
Despite the difficulties, the Shin Kubota Seto Marine Biological Laboratory, Kyoto University, has managed to survive a colony in captivity.
The researcher devotes his life to jellyfish, changing the water and feeding them with small shrimp.
When he finishes his day by a researcher, Kubota writes and sings songs to karaoke on the animal, wearing a hat jellyfish.
"Of all the animals in the world, only these jellyfish are able to reverse the aging process instead of dying," he said.
"We have no idea of the duration of their lives.
They could live forever. "
When you are injured, jellyfish taking three days to come back to the stage of polyp and then grow again towards the adult stage, Kubota says the jellyfish, although it is a primitive organism, share more genetic information with the humans with insects or worms.
This could mean that if someone will be able to understand how they manage to reverse the aging process, the same could apply to humans.
(Other researchers are less optimistic about the prospect.)
"I hope we can increase the agreed maturity of our lives with the study of the immortal jellyfish," said Kubota.
But for the moment, there are still many mysteries to be solved, and there is still much to understand about the process of their immortality.
"I think that by studying them, I could understand the mystery of life on Earth," he said.
"Even living 10,000 or 20,000 years old, I still have to learn about them.
And unfortunately I have only 100 years. "

From Vice