#hydrozoans

[antiqueanimals]

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia: vol. 1 - Lower Animals. Written by Dr. Bernhard Grzimek. 1974.

Internet Archive

1.) Corymorpha nutans

2.) Steenstrupia nutans (now Corymorpha nutans)

3.) Leuckartiara nobilis

4.) Bougainvillia sp.

5.) Eleutheria dichotoma

6.) Eleutheria sp.

7.) Geryonia proboscidalis

8.) Solmundella bitentaculata

9.) Solmissus albescens

10.) Oceania armata

11.) Koellikerina fasciculata

12.) Euphysa aurata

13.) Aglaura hemistoma

#marine life #cnidarians #hydrozoans #jellyfish

[colorsoutofearth]

Portuguese Man-of-War (Physalia physalis), Sargasso Sea, Bermuda

Photo by Solvin Zankl

#Physalia physalis #physalia #portuguese man-o-war #man-o-war #hydrozoans #bluebottle #tentacles #cnidaria #ocean #sea #marine #marine animals #sea creatures #blue #pink #pink and blue #blue and pink #nature #animals #wildlife #siphonophore

[snototter]

A crowd of sea rafts, or by-the-wind-sailors (Velella velella) in Morro Bay, California, USA

by Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith

#sea raft #by the wind sailor #hydrozoans #cnidarians #velella velella #velella #Porpitidae #Anthoathecata #hydrozoa #cnidaria #wildlife: california #wildlife: usa #wildlife: north america

[mwolf0epsilon]

Yo what do you mean those jellyfish sting after their dead?

The portuguese man 'o war is not a jellyfish, it's a hydrozoan. Which means it's not one singular animal but actually a colony of tiny animals that come together to seemingly form one body divided by specialized parts.

But that's besides the point...

They can sting days after dying because of the potency of their venom and of the effectiveness of their barbed tentacles. This is often a problem because the bright coloring attracts the attention of people who may not be aware that they are indeed venomous, and that the barbs come loose from the tentacles very easily if touched.

Over here in Portugal beaches have had to close when there's mass beachings of these things for the sake of protecting children and oblivious tourists.

That's not even mentioning the fact that, while usually not deadly to humans, the sting is incredibly painful and can cause an allergic reaction. A general rule of thumb for if you ever find yourself in a situation where you get stung by either accidentally touching or stepping on one of these, is to use vinegar to neutralize the poison. So unless you have vinegar on hand, there's not much you can do to relieve the pain until help arrives (do NOT try to pee or use alcohol on the stung area, that will just release more venom from the barbs you might have stuck on your person).

#Eps Talks About: #portuguese man 'o war #hydrozoans

[delicatelysublimeforester]

The Nature-Inspired Journey of Emperor Hirohito

Walking in the Footsteps of Hirohito: A Greenery Day Exploration The story of Greenery Day which has a name change to “Showa Day” takes us back to the youthful days of Japanese Emperor Hirohito, a man whose passion for marine biology and nature shaped the celebration we honor on April 29. Showa Day is the revamped name for Greenery Day, honoring Emperor Showa’s fondness for plants, also known as…

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#April 29 #biodiversity documentation #Biodiversity Inventory #Celebrating Life and Science #Citizen Science #City Nature Challenge #Cnidarians #Communing with Nature #Discovery and Understanding #Emperor Hirohito #Environmental Legacy #Evolution of Tradition #George Genereux Urban REgional Park #Global Appreciation #Global Health #Greenery Day #Greenery Day Chronicles #Humblest Orders of Life #Hydrozoans #iNaturalist #iNaturalist app #inspiration #interconnectedness #invasive species tracking #Japanese Culture #Japanese Emperor #legacy #Marine Biology #Marine Life #Microscopic Observation

[vintagewildlife]

Portuguese man o' war with a fish in its tentacles By: Werner Jacobs From: Natural History Magazine 1962

#predation #portuguese man o war #siphonophore #hydrozoan #cnidarian #invertebrate #1962 #1960s #Werner Jacobs #Natural History Magazine

[jellyfish-scientist]

There are approx. 200 species of scyphozoa (true jellyfish)! They’re separated into 4 orders, those being: stauromedusae, coronatae, semaeostomeae, and rhizostomeae.

Hydrozoans are similar, but different. They are closely related and share a lit of similarities.

To help with this: Portuguese man o’wars and by-the-wind-sailors aren’t true jellyfish. Helmet jellies, cannonball jellies, and cauliflower jellies are true jellyfish

#biology #marine animals #marine biology #science #sea life #sealife #jellyfish #sea animals #underwater #fish #sea #sea jellies #seajellies #ocean #cnidarians #hydrozoan #siphonophore #scyphozoa

[chilirasbora]

Blue button | Porpita porpita

X

#boras posts #salt #marine life #ocean life #ocean #hydrozoan

[bethanythebogwitch]

Last week on Wet Beast Wednesday I covered some of the biggest animals ever so this week I'm going to do a complete 180 and talk about the smallest animals in this series so far. Not so small as to be micro-animals (I'm sure I'll get to tardigrades eventually) but pretty small. Meet the hydra, a genus of freshwater cnidarians that can be found in temperate and tropical water worldwide. There's a lot of neat stuff about these tiny critters. Such as the fact that they're immortal, but we'll get to that in good time.

(image id: several hydras attached to a rock. Each hydra is a long, anrrow tube that branches at the top into 4 or more thin tentacles. They are milky-white in color. Source: Jan Hamrsky)

Hydras are visually similar to tiny anemones, but they're more closely related to siphonophores and jellyfish. Their bodies are pretty simple, consisting of a tubular body. On one end of the body is the basal disc, a simple foot that adheres to substrate. On the other end of the tube is the mouth, which leads into the gut. Ringing the mouth are tentacles that are covered in stinging cells. The gut is pretty simple and like other cnidarians, it doesn't go all the way through. That's right, when a hydra poops it comes out the same way it went in. A typical hydra consists of 50,000 to 100,000 cells and I hope for their sake that none of them are used for taste. Hydras are diploblastic, consisting of two layers of cells. For comparison, all vertebrates are triploblasts, with three cell layers. The hydra's layers are the epidermis on the outside and the gastrodermis making up the gut. Separating the layers is a gelatinous matrix called the mesoglea that functions as a hydrostatic skeleton. Hydras can contract their bodies and will do so if disturbed. When fully extended, they reach no longer than 10 mm (0.4 in). Hydras are in the cnidarian subphylum medusozoa. Other animals in this subphylum go through two stages of their lifecycle, a polyp that attaches to some substrate and a free-swimming medusa. In most, the polyp is a larval stage that will metamorphose into a medusa during maturation. Hydras instead stay as polyps their entire life. This could be a form of neoteny, the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood. Like other cnidarians, hydras are radially symmetrical. What is most impressive about hydras are their regenerative abilities.

(image id: a drawn diagram of a cross-section of a hydra with labeled anatomical features. source)

Hydras are masters of regeneration. It is this trait that earned them their name, a reference to the hydra of Greek mythology, who would grow two new heads whenever one was severed. Chop a hydra in half and each will grow into a new hydra. Chop a hydra into many pieces and you will get many hydras. Their regeneration is so impressive that if you chop one up into many cells and put them next to each other, the cells will reassemble themselves back into the original hydra. Similarly, hydras primarily reproduce asexually through budding, where one hydra will grow a new hydra out of its body. The daughter hydra will eventually split off from the parent and go on to live independently (unlike certain people I knew in high school). The daughter hydra is a genetic clone of the parent. A hydra living in good conditions can make a new clone every few days. In some species, sexual reproduction is also possible and usually only done when conditions are poor. Depending on the species, individuals can be either hermaphrodites or dioecious (either male or female). Gametes are released into the water to fertilize. Imagine if you wanted to make a baby and to do so you took a handfull of sperm or eggs and threw them all over the place, hoping that someone else also did the same thing in the right time and place. Broadcast spawning is weird.

(image ID: photos of a hydra in the process of regeneration. The hydra is green. It is cut in half, creating a head and foot end. Additional photos taken over time show each end growing into a new hydra. source)

(image id: a pale white hydra growing a bud. the bud emerges from below the head and appears as a small tube. The head of the tube is branched into 5 small nubs that will grow into tentacles. )

Hydras are predators that feed on insect larvae, tiny invertebrates, and small enough fish larvae. They use their basal discs to attach to a hard surface like a rock or branch and extend their tentacles into the water. When something brushes against the tentacle, it triggers the stinging cells. These stinging cells are called nematocysts. Each nematocyst can release what is essentially a tiny harpoon that injects neurotoxin into the target. Nematocysts fire so fast that the harpoon can experience up to 40,000 Gs of pressure. Because nematocysts are tiny, an animal that touches a tentacle will be injected with venom from many of them, getting poisoned even more as they thrash about and get tangled up. The tentacle will then transfer the prey to the mouth. Hydras can swallow pretty large prey, expanding and contracting to fit the prey animal into them. It's kind of like a snake swallowing an egg bigger than its head. While typically sessile, hydras can move around. They can slither around on their basal discs, but when they need to move fast, they summersault. When summersaulting, a hydra will reach down and grab the ground with its tentacles. It then detaches the disc and moves it to a new position. This repeats until the hydra finds itself in a good spot. A speedy hydra can move a food few inches in a day. Hydras can also secrete gas bubbles from their basal discs to float around, upside-down, in the water. A hydra will usually only move from its spot in response to pressure such as predation, competition, or lack of food.

(video: a video of a hydra capturing and eating a mosquito larva. It starts with the mosquito touching a tentacle, which adheres to and stings it. Once the larva is dead, the hydra pulls it in and gradually engulfs it. Despite the larva being larger than the hydra, the hydra can stretch its body to fully swallow the mosquito)

So about that immortality thing. Yeah, it's not just that hydras can regenerate from just about anything, they also don't age. They're kind of like Tolkien's elves in that while they won't die on their own, they can be killed. No undying lands for hydras though. As far as we know. It has been found that hydra stem cells can infinitely renew the body, preventing the effects of aging. This means that a hydra living in a place with no threats could theoretically just keep going forever. They can still die due to predation, disease, starvation, poor environment, and all the other usual suspects. We actually know the gene sequence responsible for this. I tried to read up on it, but genetics is way over my head and it literally game me a headache trying to read. Along with their longevity, hydras also have an incredible ability to repair damage to their DNA. This is important as damage or mutations in DNA accumulate with age. This is why cancer is primarily a disease of old age. As damage accumulates past the body's ability to repair it, eventually a mutation that causes cancer will come along. The longer you live, the more time this mutation has to occur. The hydra's ability to repair its DNA keeps them from all inevitably getting cancer. Naturally, scientists are hugely interested in hydra regeneration, DNA repair, and immunity to aging. If we could figure out how these things work and apply them to humans it would be huge. Expanded, perhaps even indefinite life spans with reduced effects of aging are obvious, but there are other applications. Better DNA repair could vastly reduce the chances of getting cancer or other genetic conditions while regeneration could potentially allow people to regrow limbs or organs. This is obviously still in the realm of speculation, but it's exciting to think about. In conclusion, all hail our immortal overlords, the hydras.

(image id: a hydra growing on the shell of a dead snail. The hydra is a pale yellow color and contracted, causing its midsection to bulge out. A bud is growing from one side of it. Source: Jan Hamrsky)

#wet beast wednesday #hydra #hydra animal #hydrozoan #cnidarians #biology #zoology #ecology #freshwater ecology #freshwater biology #aquatic biology #biological immortality #immortality #regeneration #not like doctor who #Youtube

[ilikeit-art]

#jellyfish #hydrozoan #pacific ocean #rare #spirocodon saltator

[musicalsiphonophore]

i love wikipedia

reblog if you too are a long stringy stingy thingy (technical term)

#siphonophore #jellyfish #marine biology #long stringy stingy thingy #hydrozoan #jellies

[donuts4evry1]

Finally beginning my box jellyfish project!

I've got all the pieces cut out and a rudimentary pattern made... all that's left to do now is sew

#I'm so nervous this pattern is like 15x more complicated than the moon jellyfish pattern #Luckily jellyfish have radial symmetry so you can make their patterns pretty similarly to how you'd make like. A paper snowflake #This is a good lesson for the kids #mun rambles #jellyfish #I should really start selling realistic jellyfish plushies I'm so done with sea nettles and vague hydrozoan representations

[neanderthalfakemon]

#043 - Anemind

#044 - Psidarian

#045 - Hydroggoth

(redesign, finally got the final evo how i wanted)

#fakemon #pokemon #water type #psychic type #hydrozoan #cnidaria #sea anenome #anenome #jellyfish #hydra #portugese man o war #colonial organism #lovecraftian #sea monster

[mwolf0epsilon]

So, both Nudibranches and Portuguese-Man-O-War exist in the Star Wars Universe. One of these things is not like the other by means of, it's named after a specific country, but there is an in-universe explanation for this and it's somehow funnier than I think was intended...

#star wars #they're mentioned in 'Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka' #and the way to fix the obvious discrepancy was to basically make a planet called Portug #guys they made space Portugal because they mentioned a real world hydrozoan and scrambled to fix the blunder I am cackling

[vintagewildlife]

Portuguese man o' war By: Unknown photographer From: Wildlife Fact-File 1990s

#portuguese man o war #siphonophore #hydrozoan #cnidarian #invertebrate #1990s #Wildlife Fact-File

[twotriickhoofbea2t]

Two heads are more argumentative than one.

#mermay #hydrozoan #mermaid