Question: Do Zebrafish die, if so how?

Juan Carlos Lopez-Baez answered on 8 Mar 2014:

Hello Aqua and Ross

Unfortunately, like (almost) any living thing, zebrafish do die. Like us, they can die of old age or they can die of disease. The fact that they can regrow and regenerate many of their tissues does not mean that they are immortal.

If they live a happy, disease-free life, they can live up to 2 or 3 years, which might not seem like much to you, but for them is very long (a life’s long!). Scientist have actually discovered that smaller animals perceive time slower than us, hence their 3 years would be somehow similar to our 80-90 years.

As an interesting fact, there are a handful of animals that can actually “live forever”, as they don’t appear to age with time. One of them even made the news not that long ago, as not only it can live forever but it can go back to being young again (like you growing old and then becoming a kid again, just to grow old again and become a kid again over and over again). How is the animal called? Very appropriately the “immortal jelly fish” or Turritopsis dohrnii.