Scientists discover ‘zombie’ sea cucumber that could outlive us all

If you told a guy in the 1760s – when the average lifespan was 38 – that you were 82, he’d probably think you could live forever.

If you told a guy in the 1760s – when the average lifespan was 38 – that you were 82, he’d probably think you could live forever.

Now, Canadian scientists may have accidentally discovered something that’s really immortal – a discarded chunk of sea cucumber.

A relative of starfish and sea urchins, sea cucumbers are blobs that creep across the ocean floor on tentacle-feet, gobbling up algae and plankton.

Three years after scientists amputated bits of a scarlet sea cucumber, known to experts as a Psolus fabricii, the tissues refuse to die.

The severed tube feet and tentacles have sat inside a tank of natural running seawater, slowly growing and healing.

Marine biogeochemist Rachel Sipler from the non-profit Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science said the sample is a ‘real-life zombie’.

‘We haven’t grown a new, complete sea cucumber yet, but we are seeing pretty stunning growth and diversification of cells literally years after this tissue was removed,’ she said.

‘It’s like a lizard that loses its tail. We know some lizards can grow new tails; we’re talking about whether the tail can grow a new lizard.’

When humans lose a chunk of flesh, it dies and decays. Same goes for lizards and other sea cucumbers, even though they can regenerate lost limbs.

This isn’t so with scarlet sea cucumbers, found in the cold waters of the Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean, however.

Instead, the tentacles that these klutzes of the ocean lose when they get into scrapes or bump into things keep on living, according to a recently published study in Science Advances.

Sipler and her team at Memorial University of Newfoundland scooped up a discarded tube foot – a tiny limb used for movement and feeding.