10 Animals That Are Impossible to Kill

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]What if I told you that some animals on this planet cannot be killed? Not hard to kill, not difficult to kill, impossible to kill.

[00:00:09]Boiled alive, frozen solid, blasted with nuclear radiation, shot into outer space, and they just I keep going. Like nothing happened.

[00:00:19]Today we are counting down 10 animals that have literally defeated death itself.

[00:00:24]Scientists have tried everything to kill these creatures and failed.

[00:00:29]Every single time.

[00:00:33]And number one, number one is sitting on the moon right now, alive, as you watch this video.

[00:00:40]I am not joking.

[00:00:42]Stay until the end because what you are about to see will completely change the way you look at life on this planet forever. And we start at 10, tardigrade, water bear, number 10.

[00:00:55]And we are starting with something you cannot even see with your naked eye.

[00:00:59]Ladies and gentlemen, meet the tardigrade, also known as the water bear.

[00:01:03]This microscopic creature is less than 1 mm long. You could fit hundreds of them on the tip of your finger right now. And yet, this tiny animal is quite possibly the most indestructible living thing on the entire planet Earth.

[00:01:17]Scientists have exposed tardigrades to the vacuum of outer space. No air, no pressure, no atmosphere.

[00:01:24]They survived.

[00:01:26]They have been frozen to minus 272° C.

[00:01:30]One single degree above absolute zero, the coldest temperature physically possible in the entire universe.

[00:01:37]They survived. They have been boiled at extreme temperatures. They survived.

[00:01:43]They have been exposed to radiation levels 1,000 times higher than the lethal dose for a human being.

[00:01:49]They survived. How is this even possible?

[00:01:53]When conditions become impossible, the tardigrade shuts down every single biological function in its body and enters a state called cryptobiosis, essentially becoming undead.

[00:02:05]Not alive, not dead.

[00:02:08]Something in between that science is still struggling to fully explain.

[00:02:12]It can stay in this undead state for over 30 years. No food, no water, no air.

[00:02:18]Just waiting.

[00:02:20]And when a single drop of water returns, it wakes up, stretches, and carries on like absolutely nothing happened.

[00:02:29]Sleep tight knowing these things are everywhere around you.

[00:02:33]Number nine.

[00:02:34]Cockroach.

[00:02:36]Number nine.

[00:02:37]The animal that every human on Earth hates.

[00:02:40]The animal that no matter what you do, simply will not die.

[00:02:44]The cockroach.

[00:02:46]These creatures have been crawling on this planet for over 300 million years.

[00:02:50]Let that sink in.

[00:02:52]300 million years.

[00:02:54]They were here before the dinosaurs.

[00:02:56]They watched the dinosaurs rise. They watched the asteroid hit. They watched the dinosaurs go extinct and they just kept crawling. Here are the facts.

[00:03:05]Cockroaches can hold their breath for 40 minutes.

[00:03:08]They can survive being submerged underwater for 30 minutes.

[00:03:11]They can live for an entire month with absolutely no food whatsoever.

[00:03:16]They can survive in temperatures from near freezing all the way to extreme heat. But here is where it gets truly disturbing.

[00:03:22]A cockroach can survive being completely decapitated, cut off its head, and the body will keep walking around for up to a full week.

[00:03:30]The head itself will sit there, slowly waving its antennae, surviving on its own for hours.

[00:03:37]Why? Because cockroaches don't breathe through their head. They breathe through tiny holes in their body called spiracles. The head is almost optional.

[00:03:46]And yes, the rumor is absolutely true.

[00:03:49]Cockroaches can withstand nuclear radiation levels 15 times higher than what would instantly kill a human being.

[00:03:55]They survived the atomic bombs at Hiroshima.

[00:03:58]These things were here before us.

[00:04:00]They will be here long, long after we are gone.

[00:04:04]Number eight, immortal jellyfish.

[00:04:07]Number eight.

[00:04:08]And this one will make you question everything you think you know about life, death, and what it means to exist.

[00:04:15]Meet Turritopsis Dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish.

[00:04:20]This jellyfish, and I need you to understand what I am about to say, is the only known animal on the face of the earth that is biologically immortal.

[00:04:29]Not metaphorically, not symbolically, biologically immortal. When this jellyfish gets old or sick or injured or stressed, instead of dying, it does something that should be impossible.

[00:04:42]It transforms itself completely back into its juvenile form, like pressing a reset button on its entire existence.

[00:04:50]It goes back to being a baby jellyfish and starts its life over again from the beginning. Imagine if you could do that.

[00:04:58]Imagine if every time life got too hard, too painful, or too old, you could simply restart. Young again, healthy again.

[00:05:05]A second chance at everything. That is what this jellyfish does, over and over and over again, potentially forever.

[00:05:14]Scientists call this process transdifferentiation, and researchers around the world are studying it right now, because if we can understand how this jellyfish resets its cells, we may unlock the secret to reversing human aging.

[00:05:27]In perfect conditions, with no predators and no disease, this jellyfish could theoretically live forever.

[00:05:35]It has no natural end, no expiration date, no final chapter.

[00:05:40]It is for all intents and purposes eternal. Number seven, axolotl. Number seven, the axolotl.

[00:05:47]This Mexican salamander looks like something pulled straight out of a fantasy video game. Pink, fluffy gills, permanent smile, completely alien appearance, and an ability that is almost supernatural. The axolotl can regenerate completely, perfectly, repeatedly. Cut off its leg and it grows back.

[00:06:07]Damage its heart, the heart repairs itself.

[00:06:11]Injure its spinal cord, it heals.

[00:06:14]Damage its brain, it regenerates.

[00:06:17]Scientists have actually transplanted one axolotl's head onto another axolotl's body, and remarkably, both animals survived.

[00:06:26]But here is what makes this truly extraordinary.

[00:06:29]It does not just heal like we do, with scars and imperfect patches. It rebuilds from scratch, perfect, functional, brand new tissue, indistinguishable from the original. No scars, no evidence of injury, just new.

[00:06:46]And it does this at any age.

[00:06:48]Young or old, the axolotl retains this superpower its entire life. Scientists around the world are racing to understand axolotl regeneration, because if we can apply this to humans, we could regrow lost limbs, repair damaged hearts, heal spinal injuries.

[00:07:04]The cure to some of the worst human suffering might be hiding inside this little smiling salamander. Number six, hydra. Number six, the hydra. A tiny freshwater creature barely visible to the naked eye.

[00:07:17]And like our jellyfish from number eight, it simply refuses to age.

[00:07:22]Scientists have been studying hydras for decades.

[00:07:25]They have tested thousands of specimens across multiple years, and they have found something extraordinary.

[00:07:32]Hydras show zero measurable signs of aging.

[00:07:35]None.

[00:07:37]Their cells simply keep renewing indefinitely, showing no decline in function, no deterioration over time, but that is only the beginning.

[00:07:46]Cut a hydra completely in half and you do not kill it.

[00:07:51]You create two hydras.

[00:07:53]Chop it into multiple pieces.

[00:07:55]Each piece grows into a complete fully functional new organism. It cannot be destroyed by division.

[00:08:02]Every fragment is a potential new life.

[00:08:05]In a laboratory, a hydra could theoretically survive for thousands upon thousands of years.

[00:08:10]Some scientists believe they may be truly biologically immortal, permanently suspended in biological youth, incapable of aging to death.

[00:08:19]Two potentially immortal animals in one video. Nature is not playing fair.

[00:08:24]Number five, planarian flatworm. Number five, the planarian flatworm. Small, flat, brown, completely unremarkable to look at, and one of the most unkillable, most scientifically bizarre organisms ever studied.

[00:08:40]Cut this flatworm into 100 pieces and you do not get one dead worm. You get 100 [music] brand new worms.

[00:08:48]Every single piece, no matter how small, regenerates into a complete, fully functioning organism. Scientists cut off a flatworm's head, the head grew an entirely new body.

[00:08:58]The body grew an entirely new head. One worm became two, both perfectly healthy.

[00:09:03]But here is the detail that keeps scientists up at night. If you train a planarian flatworm to navigate a maze, teaching it with light signals and small electric shocks, and then you cut off its head completely and allow it to regenerate a brand new head.

[00:09:18]The new head remembers the maze.

[00:09:21]The memory was not stored in the brain.

[00:09:23]It was distributed somehow throughout the entire body.

[00:09:26]The new brain reconstructed memories it never directly experienced. Science cannot fully explain this, yet. Number four, scorpion. Number four, the scorpion.

[00:09:38]One of the oldest predators still walking the Earth, scorpions have existed for 430 million years, surviving every single mass extinction event in the entire history of this planet.

[00:09:49]Everyone. They can go without eating for a full year by slowing their metabolism down to just 33% of normal.

[00:09:56]Essentially putting themselves into a low-power survival mode.

[00:10:00]They have been completely frozen in blocks of solid ice and successfully thawed back to life.

[00:10:05]They can survive being submerged underwater for 48 hours. And here is something truly surreal.

[00:10:11]Scorpions glow bright blue-green under ultraviolet light, brilliantly, beautifully.

[00:10:17]And after 430 million years of studying them, scientists still cannot fully agree on why.

[00:10:24]These ancient hunters are living fossils, virtually unchanged since before the dinosaurs existed.

[00:10:31]Because they perfected survival so completely, so absolutely, that evolution saw no reason to change them.

[00:10:38]Why improve perfection?

[00:10:41]No.

[00:10:43]Three, crocodile.

[00:10:45]Number three, the crocodile.

[00:10:48]While the mighty dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago, crocodiles survived.

[00:10:54]And if you compare a modern crocodile to its ancestors from 200 million years ago, they look almost completely identical.

[00:11:02]Because they achieved perfect survival design so long ago, evolution simply stopped changing them.

[00:11:09]Crocodiles can go without food for up to three full years by dramatically slowing their metabolism.

[00:11:15]Their immune system is unlike anything else on Earth, so powerful that they can survive in some of the most bacteria-infested waters imaginable, healing from wounds that would kill virtually any other animal through infection alone. And here is something remarkable that most people do not know.

[00:11:30]Crocodile blood contains powerful natural antibiotics, compounds capable of destroying bacteria that are completely resistant to every modern human antibiotic.

[00:11:40]Scientists are studying crocodile blood right now, hoping it could become the next generation of medicine against antibiotic resistant superbugs. The oldest predator on Earth, and it might be the thing that saves human lives in the future.

[00:11:54]Number two, mantis shrimp. Number two, the mantis shrimp.

[00:11:59]Do not let those impossibly beautiful rainbow colors fool you for even 1 second. This animal throws a punch at 23 m/s, the same speed as a bullet leaving a gun.

[00:12:10]It strikes with the force of a rifle bullet.

[00:12:13]Proportionally, it is the most powerful punch delivered by any living creature on this planet.

[00:12:18]They shatter aquarium glass regularly.

[00:12:21]They break the claws off crabs with single strikes. Their punch is so fast it creates a cavitation bubble, a shockwave of collapsing water that hits the target again, even if the first punch misses. Two hits from one punch.

[00:12:35]And if the devastating physical power was not enough, the mantis shrimp sees the world in a way completely beyond human comprehension.

[00:12:42]We have three types of color receptors.

[00:12:45]The mantis shrimp has 16.

[00:12:47]It perceives wavelengths of light, ultraviolet, infrared, that are completely invisible to us.

[00:12:54]It is seeing an entire dimension of reality that we cannot even imagine, rainbow colored. Bullet speed punch, superhuman vision, completely indestructible in its environment.

[00:13:05]Nature built this thing and said, "Yes, this is fine."

[00:13:10]Number one, tardigrade on the moon. And number one, number one is not just an animal, it is a fact.

[00:13:18]A real, documented, verified scientific fact that will completely rewire how you think about life in this universe.

[00:13:25]In April 2019, an Israeli spacecraft called Beresheet was attempting to land on the moon.

[00:13:31]The mission failed. The spacecraft crashed onto the lunar surface.

[00:13:36]On board that spacecraft, but sealed in a small container, were thousands of dehydrated tardigrades.

[00:13:42]Our friends from number 10.

[00:13:44]The spacecraft crashed. The container broke open. The tardigrades scattered across the surface of the moon, and they are still there.

[00:13:53]Right now, tonight.

[00:13:55]As you sit watching this video, tardigrades are on the moon. Scientists believe they survived the crash.

[00:14:01]In the vacuum of space, with no atmosphere, no water, no air, they simply entered cryptobiosis, shut everything down, and waited.

[00:14:10]If a future astronaut ever lands near that crash site and introduces even a tiny amount of water, those tardigrades could wake up, alive, on the moon, having survived [music] years in outer space.

[00:14:24]But, here is the thought that will truly keep you awake tonight. Scientists have calculated that tardigrades could survive the sun expanding into a red giant and consuming the Earth in 5 billion years. They could survive a nearby star going supernova. They could survive an asteroid impact that completely sterilizes the planet's surface. If every single living thing on Earth was wiped out tomorrow, plants, animals, humans, bacteria, everything, tardigrades would survive, and life on Earth would eventually rebuild around them.

[00:14:55]They are not just impossible to kill.

[00:14:58]They are impossible to erase from existence.

[00:15:01]The most powerful animal on Earth is invisible to the naked eye, and it is currently living on the moon.

[00:15:06]So, there you have it. 10 animals that have made death completely irrelevant.

[00:15:11]From the ancient cockroach that outlived the dinosaurs, to the biologically immortal jellyfish, to the regenerating axolotl, to the indestructible tardigrades sitting silently on the moon right now.

[00:15:23]Nature is far more extraordinary, far more powerful, and far more strange than we ever give it credit for. Which animal shocked you the most?

[00:15:31]Tell me in the comments. I read every single one.

[00:15:35]If this video blew your mind, smash that like button.

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[00:15:50]This is Zoo Choose Us. See you in the next one.