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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22961694

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-mole-rat-prophecies/

These factors mean the mortality of naked mole rats does not appear to increase with age, allowing them to evolve genes for longevity, Prof Buffenstein told the BBC.

Does that mean that they can live forever barring physical trauma?

> Does that mean that they can live forever barring physical trauma?

Doesn't seem to be the case, they have a very long (for rodents — it is the longest-lived rodent known — and even more so at their size: they're between mice and rats and live 3 times as long as capybaras) lifespan and significant aging seems to occur only at the very end of that lifespan, but they're not immortal as they also die in lab settings.

I think that's true for some jellyfish and lobsters too

For lobsters, that's still a matter for debate. See [1] and [2].

Some animals just do live a long time though. A clam believed to be 405 years old was found in waters off Iceland in 2007 [3]. I'm not a marine biologist, but I suspect that an absence of predators may be relevant.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster#Longevity

[2] http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8520/under-the-r...

[3] http://phys.org/news112870855.html

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