“Chirodropidae is a family of venomous box jellyfish within the class Cubozoa. Within the family of Chirodropidae. A similar family is Carybdeidae. This indicative character of this family of box jellyfish is their branched pedalia. Organisms falling within this family like other box jellyfish can be found in coastal and shallow marine areas but resarch has shown that they have also been found to inhabit areas at benthic depths.”
“Stings from some species, including Chironex fleckeri, Carukia barnesi, Malo kingi, and a few others, are extremely painful and often fatal to humans.”
The Australian box jellyfish is Chironex fleckeri.
The Australian irukadnji is Carukia barnesi.
“In parts of the Malay Archipelago, the number of lethal cases is far higher than in Australia. In the Philippines, an estimated 20-40 people die annually from Chirodropid stings”
To puit it another way, the box jellyfish is the closest living relative of Chirodectes.
Avispa marina, Genera Chironex
It hadn’t occurred to me until this thread appeared just how weird box jellyfish are.
By far the majority of echinoderms have approximate five-fold symmetry.
Box jellyfish have four-fold summetry.
That difference is as significant as the difference between tetrapods (descendents of amphibians) and hexapods (eg. insects).
Both echinoderms and tetrapods have bilateral symmetry.
