Lifeform of the week: Portuguese Man o’ War

EarthSky

Lifeform of the week: Portuguese Man o’ War
Jul 07, 2015
by Alex Reshanov in Blogs » Earth

Don’t call the Portuguese Man o’ War a jellyfish. And don’t get near its stinging tentacles, even if it’s dead.

I was splashing around in the waves of the Gulf coast when I saw it – a translucent bluish blob floating on the surface of the water. “Is that a jellyfish?!” I yelped. “Yeah,” my boyfriend replied, “Looks like a Man o’ War”. We followed it as it drifted to the shore. I was becoming less convinced. “No, it’s just a bag, or maybe some trash.” The form was too synthetic looking to be an animal. But what washed up on the sand was neither plastic bag nor jellyfish. The Portuguese Man o’ War may look like a jellyfish*, but it’s actually a colony of 4 different polyps, each working together to form a functional “individual,” if you’re willing to stretch your definition of that word.

Cast and Crew

It may be challenging to think of an animal classified by a single species name – Physalia physalis – as being four separate creatures, but such is the strange reality of this squishy thing. The parts are so interdependent that any one can’t survive without the company of the other three. Sort of like how a ship can’t sail properly without all its crewmembers. Except that — in this case — the skipper, first mate and the rest are all tangled together into one gelatinous mass. Allow me to introduce you to the crew:

Polyp 1 – The pneumatophore. The floaty part that sticks out from the water. It is for this gas-filled bladder that the collective organism is named, as it looks a bit like the old warship with lofty sails.

Polyp 2 – The dactylozooids. These are the infamous stinging tentacles. They average about 30 feet (9 meters) in length but can be as long as 165 feet (50 meters).

Polyp 3 – The gastrozooids. These guys are in charge of digestion. They are a cluster of bag-like stomachs found underneath the floaty polyp.

Polyp 4 – The gonozooids. The Man o’ War’s reproductive department.

More
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