Apr 20
Uncharismatic Fact of the Day
There's no such thing as immortality, but planarians get awfully close. Studies have shown that flatworms are able to regenerate multiple copies of themselves when cut into pieces- including complete decapitation, where both the head and body will regrow, and regeneration from pieces as small as 1/279th of an individual's total mass. What's more, they don't display signs of aging or slowed cell regeneration as they get older. This is all thanks to the special adult stem cells, called neoblasts, which can produce every kind of cell in a planarian body.
(Image: A land planarian (Geoplanidae sp.) by Bernard DuPont)
