Jellyfish: Lovely To Look At, Horrible To Touch

Here’s a bunch of photos of jellyfish looking amazing with a few jellyfish facts along the way…

Jellyfish have been in the seas for 650 million years which makes them the longest living multi-organ creature on the planet. They nailed that evolution thing first time.

Jellyfish can be found in every ocean at every depth. They can be as small as a pin head or bigger than a human.

They are composed of three layers: an outer layer, called the epidermis; a middle layer made of a thick, elastic, jelly-like substance called mesoglea; and an inner layer, called the gastrodermis.

They aren’t actually “fish” so the name is a bit misleading. Some aquariums are now trying to popularise the term “jellies” or “sea jellies” instead. I reckon they shouldn’t bother messing with the name though. I mean, unless they’re planning on changing “sea horses” too.

The collective term for jellyfish is swarm or bloom. In some Asian countries they are eaten and apparently taste like crunchy seaweed.

Jellyfish have no need for a respiratory system. They can get all the oxygen they need through their massive body surface and ultra thin skin.

Box jellyfish venom is the worst in the animal kingdom and has caused at least 5,568 deaths since 1954. Each individual tentacle has around 50,000 sindasites which are fired into their victim to deliver the deadly toxin. They kill far more people yearly than sharks do. Keep up sharks.

The lion’s mane species is the biggest of all the jellyfish, their bell can reach 2.3 m (7 feet 6 inches) across and the tentacles grow up to 36.5 m (120 feet).

Irukandji are the smallest jellyfish in the world. They live in Australia and have impressively powerful venom: it’s 100 times as potent as a cobra’s spit and 1,000 times as potent as a tarantula.

So they’ve been around for ages, some of them will kill you, they live everywhere (there’s even one freshwater species) and they look amazing. I still wouldn’t give one a kiss though.