For natural law theories, property rights are a formidable problem, because our animal nature is fully compatible with theft. There can be made an argument that property is needed for one's survival, but this does not involve all property or the survival of the others that may depend on alienating one's property. So one needs to appeal to some other nature than biological one; e.g., one's rational nature.
One school of natural theology is that this "other" nature is the better nature we were endowed with during the Creation; the Fall corrupted this original nature but it still has a hold on us, and the moral norms are the remnants of this nature that is cast on our hearts. This nature is not what we presently are but what we supposed to be, ought to be, and will become. We've started as sin-free immortal creatures; it is our own fault that we are mortal, sinful, and thieving. On this theory, property rights derive from our prelapsarian nature, and to explain property one needs to explain how the protection of property naturally emerges from this nature.
We do not have too many examples of immortal animals around, but we do have some polyps that can endlessly regenerate themselves, and T. nutricula mentioned in the previous post is the most complex example of this kind: after releasing the gametes, its adult medusa form undergoes transformation back to the juvenile form, the colonial polyp state, by cell transdifferentiation. Like most other animals, we gradually age and die through senescence after we reach sexual maturity and produce offspring. In contrast, these jellies go back to the cradle, so to speak. It is the endless cycle of maturation followed by rejuvenation, back and forth, back and forth. This cycling is the most advanced form of immortality seen on this planet.
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/307061.html
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