“Bluebottle Jellyfish”
Day 71 of 366 Day Project
“Magic is everywhere, explore & be amazed everyday!”
Bluebottles are one of nature’s many fine creatures with their beautiful Purple-Blue-Turquoise colour they can seem quite mesmerising and beautiful to many, but don’t be fooled by these wonderful creature’s colouring and shape!
Bluebottles sting thousands of Australian swimmers every year – from ocean swimmers, children frolicking in the shallows to walkers walking along the beach. A bluebottle can sting you at any time of day!
With tentacles that can reach up to three meters long and brought in by strong winds and forceful currents, a Bluebottle’s sting can be both irritating and extremely painful, lasting up to 5 or more hours of constant pain.
But let’s look further into the blue bottle jellyfish—which isn’t a jellyfish. And it’s not one animal. A blue bottle is four different kinds of creatures, known as zooids, living together to form what seems to be one creature.
It’s fascinating as one part makes up the flotation bladder, another does the hunting, another the eating and digesting, and yet another takes care of reproduction.
The Bluebottle, also known as the ‘Portuguese Man-of-War’ is not a single animal but a colony of four kinds of highly modified individuals (polyps). The polyps are dependent on one another for survival.
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