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How long do jellyfish live

There are many types of jellyfish with varying lifespans, with the average ornamental jellyfish surviving for 2-3 months, jellyfish for about a year, and other jellyfish for about two years. Only lighthouse jellyfish can achieve reverse growth, other jellyfish cannot.

Jellyfish, known to humans, can live for about a year. In the case of the jellyfish in Bohai Bay, for example, small jellies start to grow in the spring, turn into adults in the summer, spawn in September, and pretty much die by the end of October. Other jellyfish, life expectancy is also mostly about one or two years.

Jellyfish will go through two stages in their lives: the hydroid (fixed life) and the jellyfish (swimming life). After a jellyfish becomes a jellyfish from the hydroid, it can only remain a jellyfish until it dies.

But some scientists have found that a "lighthouse jellyfish" will change from a hydroid back to a hydrozoan if it encounters a poor environment in a laboratory setting. It's like "going back in time".

Expanded:

Lighthouse Jellyfish

Lighthouse Jellyfish, like other jellyfish, are divided into two species, male and female, and reproduce by means of fertilization, and usually live and die in the traditional way.

But when it comes to emergencies, lighthouse jellyfish don't die as usual, but "reverse the cells of their bodies toward rejuvenation. This "reverse growth" is conditional on starvation, physical damage, or other sudden crises.

This is when the lighthouse jellyfish transforms itself into a droplet-like cyst, from which it continues to develop into the jellyfish's original life form, a colony of hydroids.

In this process, cells throughout the body of the lighthouse jellyfish are transformed, with muscle cells transforming into neuron cells, or sperm and eggs. Through asexual reproduction, this one colony of hydroids will once again grow into hundreds of jellyfish that nearly match the DNA of previous adult lighthouse jellyfish.

This ability of the lighthouse jellyfish to avoid death makes it biologically theoretically immortal.

National Geographic China - Cold facts about jellyfish

China.com - Jellyfish's law of life helps fight cancer