Fact Friday

Some cnidarians switch between a polyp and a medusa body form. Corals and anemones only have the polyp stage. Jellyfish, as we think of them, are in the medusa stage, but they have a polyp stage when they are juveniles. Hydrozoans have the opposite: their adult form is a polyp, but they have a juvenile medusa stage.

Photo Credit: KSLOF, Rob Martimbeault

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Fact Friday

February 17, 2023

Lion’s Mane

The lion’s mane jelly is the largest of jellyfish. It can even exceed the length of a blue whale! They have eight clusters of tentacles, containing about a hundred tentacles each. These clusters can grow to just under 100 feet (30 meters) long. The colorful, tangled arms in the center of the animal is what gives them their name.

A Lion’s mane jelly By Dan Hershman [CC-BY2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0] 26 September 2006 via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Largelionsmanejellyfish.jpg.