When our old school teacher told us there was such a thing as a ‘sea cucumber’ we assumed she’d been puffing the wacky baccy, reported her to social services and got her banned from teaching minors for life. Well, it turns out she was right all along – sea cucumbers do exist. Sorry about that Mrs MacTree. Our bad.

It turns out that not only do sea cucumbers exist, but according to scientists at Queen Mary, Universtity of London, they can reverse the ageing process. Well, sort of - they may hold the key to banishing wrinkles.

Like spotting your first grey pube, discovering that your crow’s feet are still visible even though you stopped smiling last Sunday can be a traumatic experience. Some people argue that wrinkles make you look distinguished and tell a story of a life well lived. We, on the other hand, think they make our face look like a balloon four days after the party. So as soon as we heard about the Cocoon-esque abilities of sea cucumbers, we sent the work experience slave to LIDL to buy every last one in town.

As it turns out though, eating sea cucumbers isn’t the answer, it’s what they can teach us about the aging process. Welcome to what is known in the trade as the ‘science bit’. The reason your skin – not ours, we’re botoxed to high heaven – goes wrinkly is because of changes to your skin’s collagen levels as you age. Clever old sea cucumbers are able to change the elasticity of their collagen which means they don’t get wrinkly.

That’s why you'll never see an ancient looking sea cucumber doing back stroke at your local swimming pool. It doesn’t explain why you never see baby pigeons though. They just seem to come out fully formed with an addiction to nicoteen and one foot missing. Anyway, what this all boils down to is we ate 17 sea cucumbers for nothing. Great.

Wrinkly Mother Teresa impersonator Violet Minotaur was equally as annoyed, “I wish you’d told me that sooner. I just read the headline, went straight out and spent £23,000 on professional diving gear, flew to the Great Barrier Reef where I caught me some sea cucumbers. I would have caught more but my husband got eaten by a shark and the resulting paperwork took hours to complete. He's so annoying. Was so annoying.”

So, we now know how sea cucumbers stay wrinkle-free despite being under water all day. But until scientists reveal exactly how this might stop us looking so haggard as we tiptoe out of our one night stand’s bedroom each morning, there’s always botox. Or a mask.

Next Article: Scientists Create Allergy-Free Cows Milk

Copyright : Comedy Central UK