Animal like Pando
Pando is a system of clones, each clone is connected and genetically identical to the others and they all share the same roots.
Pando is the heaviest and oldest living organism, with a size of 430'000 square meters , a weight of 6,600 tons ($6.6 \times 10^6$ kg) and aged over 80,000 years.
How could an animal-like creature use the same system as Pando, but with the ability to move and eventually develop an intelligence, not through traditional evolution by creating offspring, but by evolving during its life time?
This organism can clone its components, like Pando does, to live without limits.
Example: Lost an arm, leg or head, replace it with a cloned one.
This organism has to have the ability to reproduce and "give birth to" other similar systems.
It has also to be something considerably more complex than just a bacterial colony.
The system can have any size but has to look like one single organism from outside when observed by an ordinary person, so corals are partially excluded and metaphors/ideas like humanity being only one organism are completely excluded.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/46754. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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