I used to think the Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia physalis), or bluebottle, was a jellyfish.

Despite its superficial similarity to jellyfish, the PMOW is a siphonophore, which means that this thing shown below is actually a colony made up of several genetically identical but developmentally specialised individuals of the species P. physalis.

These so called zooids include:

neumatophore, whose whole purpose in life is to be an inflatable sac filled with carbon-monoxide enriched air to float on the surface, with a little ridge on top to act as a sail gonozooid, an individual that contains developed reproductive organs gastrozooid, an individual that takes care of digestion dactylozooid, the tentacles, used for stinging and catching prey

This is the wildest thing I’ve heard all week. Nature is freaky.

“A gonozooid typically has hardly any other function than reproduction, amounting to little more than a motile gonad. “

A simple life.

dv said:

I used to think the Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia physalis), or bluebottle, was a jellyfish.

Despite its superficial similarity to jellyfish, the PMOW is a siphonophore, which means that this thing shown below is actually a colony made up of several genetically identical but developmentally specialised individuals of the species P. physalis.

These so called zooids include:

neumatophore, whose whole purpose in life is to be an inflatable sac filled with carbon-monoxide enriched air to float on the surface, with a little ridge on top to act as a sail gonozooid, an individual that contains developed reproductive organs gastrozooid, an individual that takes care of digestion dactylozooid, the tentacles, used for stinging and catching prey

This is the wildest thing I’ve heard all week. Nature is freaky.

Yep. Portuguese man o war is by far the best known of the siphonophores. There are many others that are much more beautiful, but they seldom survive the trip from the deep ocean to the surface, disintegrating into single cells as the individual cells die.

Peter Sellers on the Origins of Bluebottle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0swIJIp9ao0

sarahs mum said:

Peter Sellers on the Origins of Bluebottle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0swIJIp9ao0

Thank you.

I was hoping someone would bring Bluebottle to our attention…

AussieDJ said:

sarahs mum said:

Peter Sellers on the Origins of Bluebottle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0swIJIp9ao0

Thank you.

I was hoping someone would bring Bluebottle to our attention…

not…Yes, What, Old Time Radio Show, Greenbottle Digging Holes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLrX9SB-a1g

I went for a walk along the beach one day and the kids and I played ‘don’t step on the mine’. the dog did not seem to care.. there were hundreds of them washed up

Arts said:

I went for a walk along the beach one day and the kids and I played ‘don’t step on the mine’. the dog did not seem to care.. there were hundreds of them washed up

What a lovely group photo!

We get mass-strandings of bluebottles fairly frequently here. The last one was about a fortnight ago. We also get mass-strandings of other blue, floating, Cnidarian specialised colonies – velella and porpita. We sometimes see their predators, too – the tiny “blue dragon” nudibranch and the blue-shelled gastropod, Janthina janthina.

Before I moved here and read more about these animals, I had thought the colony was not each individual bluebottle, but thousands of these, and that that “colony” was broken up by the surf. How wrong was I…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velella

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porpita_porpita

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaucus_atlanticus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janthina_janthina

dv said:

I used to think the Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia physalis), or bluebottle, was a jellyfish.

Despite its superficial similarity to jellyfish, the PMOW is a siphonophore, which means that this thing shown below is actually a colony made up of several genetically identical but developmentally specialised individuals of the species P. physalis.

These so called zooids include:

neumatophore, whose whole purpose in life is to be an inflatable sac filled with carbon-monoxide enriched air to float on the surface, with a little ridge on top to act as a sail gonozooid, an individual that contains developed reproductive organs gastrozooid, an individual that takes care of digestion dactylozooid, the tentacles, used for stinging and catching prey

This is the wildest thing I’ve heard all week. Nature is freaky.

Fascinating thing.

I didn’t know about the genetically identical but developmentally specialised bit. Wonder how they determine which zooid to turn into.

Not so fascinating when you get stung by one of the pricks.

I hate them zoids..