Jellyfish are one of the most interesting creatures living on Earth. Their body consists of flooded mesogley - connective tissue, in appearance resembling jelly.
The shape of these inhabitants of the water element resembles an umbrella or a bell, a mushroom or a star, since these creatures have thin tentacles. Therefore, they got their name from the Greek word with the root “molas”, which in translation sounds like “black stars” or “asters”.
The largest jellyfish is Cyanea capilata, also called giant cyanoea, Arctic cyanoea, hairy cyanide or mane of a lion. It refers to scyphoid jellyfish.
In 1865, a huge jellyfish was cast ashore after a storm in the Massachusetts Bay. The diameter of her umbrella was 2.29 m, while the length of the tentacles was almost 37 meters! Zoologists believe that among the Arctic cyanes the largest jellyfish can be found with an umbrella diameter of two and a half meters and forty-meter tentacles.
Giant cyanide lives in the North Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean, as well as in the seas of the Arctic. But the largest jellyfish rarely approaches the shore, so few people manage to meet her. People, viewing photos of the lucky ones, do not believe in their credibility, considering photoshop. However, such whoppers take place in nature.
The largest jellyfish moves in a reactive way, like its relatives. When muscles contract, water is abruptly pushed out of the cavity of the umbrella - this allows the jelly-like creature to move in the water quite quickly.
The body color of the jellyfish varies depending on its size. Large individuals are red, brown, brown and even dark purple. On the edge of the umbrella are tentacles (they are collected in eight beams) and
sensory organs. In the middle of the lower (concave) side is the mouth, surrounded by thin fringed oral lobes.
The largest jellyfish in the world feeds on small marine life: plankton, crustaceans, mollusks, fish caviar and small fish. She herself can also serve as a dinner for some large fish. Particularly often eaten by marine predators small individuals.
The jellyfish paralyzes its victims with poison located in the stinging cells on the tentacles. Hollow long threads are twisted into spirals inside stinging cells. A small hair sticks out, which, when touched, acts like a trigger, the thread is thrown out of the capsule and digs into the victim. And already poison enters the thread. The jellyfish slowly and slowly paralyzes the victim with a tentacle, and then with his mouth blades.
It should be noted that jellyfish themselves do not attack people - as a food object, people are not interested in it. However, the jellyfish is capable of "burning" a particularly careless curious with its poison. These chemical burns, although not fatal, are quite painful, especially if the jellyfish is large.
The world's largest jellyfish reproduces in this way. The males throw sperm into the water, from where they penetrate the body of the female and fertilize the eggs. Then the eggs develop into planula larvae. Leaving the body of the jellyfish and swimming for several days, the larva attaches to the substrate and transforms into a polyp.
As a polyp, this species of marine life reproduces by budding, forming daughter polyps. In the spring, the polyp turns into a larva - ether, and the ether is gradually transformed into a jellyfish.