guess what, it’s time for another episode of Weird Biology! today we’re going to learn about a creature that looks like a stained-glass window, but stalks the oceans with toxic might powered only by the wind like a sailing ship of old.
that’s right, it’s the devil’s own shopping bag-
the name is almost longer than the animal.
The Portuguese Man o’ War is a floating jellyfish relative called a Hydrozoan. it was named after the 18th century sailing ship, apparently by a blind person. “oh, it looks like a sailing ship under full sail” no it doesn’t, shut up. it looks like a rogue walmart shopping bag that blew into the Atlantic and makes a living by strangling innocent sea turtles.
but like the aforementioned plastic bag, the Man o’ War uses its lovely blue-purple air sac to catch the breeze. it wanders in groups through the warm waters of the Atlantic, driven along by the wind and tides. kind of poetic, really.
as long as you don’t look underwater, anyway.
I’m about to ruin it for everybody, hang on.
like so many other things in life, it’s not what you see on the surface that’s important but what is underneath that counts.
in this case, what’s underneath is up to 165 feet of venomous tentacles. it’s like that thing they say about icebergs, where you only see the top 10% and the rest is an invisible ship-killing nightmare? it’s exactly like that.
except with poison tentacles.
the Man o’ War is basically a biological fishing trawler, trailing these stupidly long tentacles like a fine mesh net through the water. and when an innocent fish who probably has a family at home comes into contact with this “net”, specialized cells called Nematocysts are triggered to fire tiny poison harpoons into the victim, causing instant death or paralysis.
the tentacle then reels itself upward into the body of the Man o’ War like a fishing line, dragging its helpless victim upward to be digested.
so, uh, actually not like a fishing trawler then, not like a fishing trawler at all.
unless the fishing trawler was designed by Junji Ito.
though the Man o’ War may look like a jellyfish, it’s definitely not. in fact, it’s not even a single animal! it’s actually four separate organisms jammed into a venomous trenchcoat like three best friends trying to sneak into an R rated movie.
“how the fuck even”, I hear you say. and that’s a valid question! it’s not everyday that we discover that what we thought was a single animal is actually four smaller animals living communally to form a larger, more dangerous animal. it would be like discovering that opossums are actually comprised of 17 rats each.
no word on if they do a silly dance and tap their fingers together to fuse or what though.
in the Man o’ War’s case, these four individual kinds of “polyps” that comprise the complete final form are the air sac polyp (gets the gang around), the digestive polyp (converts murdered fish into energy for the whole gang), the reproductive polyp (makes small clones of each individual gang member), and the tentacle polyp (murders things indiscriminately for the sheer joy of it).
that’s right, the tentacles are a separate animal! you might be wondering if they sometimes come loose, wander off, and just sting people/animals randomly when they drift into populated areas. what a silly question!
yeah, happens all the time.
SHIT.
while rarely fatal, Man o’ Wars stings can seriously injure humans. this is a big problem in areas where Man o’ Wars are common, because storms and predators can knock the tentacles right the fuck off. the tentacles drift away, only to wash ashore and sting a hapless beachgoer weeks later. that’s right, rogue tentacles can still sting for days or weeks after separation! even if the Man ‘o War is beached! isn’t that neat! fuck!
the discovery of a beached Man o’ War usually closes the entire fucking beach, for this reason. would YOU want to go fuck around in the sand if it might be full of over a hundred feet of poison spaghetti too fine to notice with the naked eye?
if the answer is yes, I have great news about a bridge I’d like to sell you.
if all this information upset you, I’d like to offer my deepest condolences. but buckle up for one last upsetting fact, and here it is: Man o’ War are spreading.
usually restricted to warm waters, climate change has driven the Man o’ War as far north as Great Britain. that’s awful awful awful news for any country that touches the Atlantic ocean, which is lots of them.
luckily, we have dependable allies in this fight: sea turtles and the Mola Mola! (which I’ve written about before) unfortunately just about all we can do at this point is to cheer these awesome devil-balloon-munchers on from the safety of shore, while trying to invent a Man o’ War-proof barrier net.
for now, watch out for anything that looks like a floating plastic bag.
and for god’s sake, watch where you step.
–
thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series here.
if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee or check out my Patreon to see extra content and support Weird Biology.
–
IMAGE SOURCES
img1- National Geographic img2- The Garden of Eadon img3- Sean Nash img4- Enrico Villa img5- livescience.com img6-
diply.com
img7- Daily Mail img8- Sun Sentinel
it’s not everyday that we discover that what we thought was a single animal is actually four smaller animals living communally to form a larger, more dangerous animal
I looked this up and by “bike gang” they apparently meant literal bicycles.
Upon further research, James was in the same gang and had to use training wheels.
I was at first going to say “I thought every one knew this” and then I remembered “Duh Not everyone is as old as me… “ T_T god I’m old.
Dont gloss over the part where she also went to nursing school to become a Pokemon Center Nurse. She flunked out but made best friends with a Chansey! Basically everything in that blurb has happened at some point in the anime
I don’t think the thing with her mom was though, that was released as a radio play. Madame Boss (Giovanni’s mother) Sent Jessie’s mom (in Japan known as Miyamoto) and tried to convince Mew to let her catch it by showing it a picture of Jessie
CAN WE FUCKIN DITCH ASH AND MAKE THESE 3 LOSERS THE MAIN PROTAGONISTS
So… the reason why Giovanni keeps Jesse around is because his mother ruined Jesse’s life by taking away her mother, and he feels guilty about it?
It actually kinda makes sense,
I can’t believe Mew fucking murdered Jessie’s mom
Please, just give me a spinoff series about Team Rocket.
There’s actually a lot of reasons for Giovanni to keep these guys around. Like, they’re really bad at actual crime and basically never turn a profit, so he was understandably pissed at them for a lot of the first couple seasons and revoked their funding a few times, but then? They started to save the world. Every time Ash got into some seriously apocalyptic shit, Team Rocket was there to back him up. And they have been instrumental in society/the world/the fabric of spacetime remaining intact at least a dozen times by now.
Now, Giovanni is not a good person, but he is a practical man. You cannot run a profitable criminal empire when everybody is dead or money has no meaning. And ever since MewTwo escaped there’s approximately fuck all he can do to stop most of the forces intent on demolishing the planet he does business on and, by extension, his business. But all the evidence suggests that if he continues to supply these couple losers with fresh hot air balloons and giant vacuum cleaners every few weeks and then leaves them to do whatever stupid shit they’re doing, the world will remain safe for years to come. And he may not have any clue as to how or why this works, but you do not get to be in control of the most powerful criminal organization in the world by questioning results.
