Thread: Immortal worms

Discovering the "fountain of youth" in a sewage outlet behind a hospital!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edh9d0Ut7RU

That's pretty neat. Ill-conceived thought of the day:

Could this ability have evolved through neoteny? An ability to keep cells undifferentiated after the fetal stage?

Could this ability have been lost to higher organisms, perhaps because it is somehow cancer-promoting? A lot of control mechanisms have evolved to regulate cell proliferation in mammals. Perhaps the risks outweighted the benefits?