Världsrymden anfaller

 

Är 2025 det värsta året någonsin? Jag kunde ha svurit på att det var 2020!

Mardrömsbeskedet: kannibalmasken har överlevt vintern i Skåne

Reverse aging

 

A comb jelly
Credit: Steven G Johnson

A kind of weird experiment, would probably have been considered cruelty to animals had it not been a primitive/basal jellyfish-like organism, so the RSPCA and the ALF don´t give shit! Still, I suppose the ability to "reverse aging" is...interesting. What a pity it´s only cnidarians, comb jellies and the dog tapeworm (!) that has this unusual ability. 

This sea creature can age in reverse

The next link goes to a Wiki article about "Ming the Mollusk", a quahog clam and the oldest animal ever recorded. Or rather "the oldest individual (non-colonial) animal ever discovered whose age could be precisely determined". Yes, it was 507 years old when it was captured and killed (!) off the Icelandic coast. So this damn mollusc was older than our industrial civilization?!

Ming (clam)  

And if you absolutely want to read Wikipedia´s confusing list of the oldest organisms ever-ever-forever (many considerably more ancient than poor old Ming), you can find it here. I *think* the absolutely oldest living "things" ever were bacterial spores found in New Mexico which were revived after 250 million years. And then there´s the story about the scientist in California who sold "Amber Ale" produced with a 45 million year old revived yeast!

Somehow, I find that hard to believe. 

List of longest-living organisms

The legend of Tor Karling

"The biology of the Turbellaria" is a heavy volume, edited by E.R. Shockaert and I.R. Ball. It's published by Dr. W. Junk Publishers as no. 6 in their series Developments in Hydrobiology. It contains papers presented at the Third international symposium on the biology of the Turbellaria, in honour of the living legend (the editors' words!) Tor G. Karling. A brief biography of Tor, who spent 50 years in turbellarian research, has been included plus a photo of the old man. The rest of the book contains sections on Systematics & Zoogeography, Ecology & Faunistics, Nutrition & Reproduction, Regeneration & Differentiation, Ultrastructure.

This is an extremely technical work, only for Tor's students, I imagine. Are the freshwater triclads (Paludicola) monophyletic or not? What is the geographical and bathymetrical distribution of the Fecampiidae? Seven entirely new species of sand-dwelling Turbellaria from the Netherlands are described.

However, the book doesn't answer the most important question, a question so crucial that it's amazing the editors didn't think of including it. And that question is: What the hell *is* a turbellarian anyway???

Another living legend, perhaps? Or just a living fossil?