The Portuguese Man of War Jellyfish

The Portuguese Man Of War jellyfish is a beautiful jellyfish that can be found in the tropical and subtropical regions of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. They have a very venomous sting, but it's not deadly just very painful. The Portuguese Man of War jellyfish, also called 'Physalia Physalis' lives in Hawaii and travel in groups of hundreds or even thousands of individuals.

The Portuguese Man Of War Jellyfish is a very special creature. It's said that it exists out of four individual organisms called Polyps. These Polyps work together to keep the jellyfish alive.

The various body parts of the Portuguese man of war:

1. Pneumatophore is the part of the jellyfish that you see floating. It's actually a balloon filled with gas (carbon monoxide) and you can see it very clearly, if you saw one.

2. Dactylozooids these are the tentacles of the jellyfish that are needed to catch prays like fishes. Some of these arms are also used to bring the food to the feeding organism.

3. Gastrozooids the organism that digest all the food.

4. Gonozooids the organism that is used for the reproduction.

Like I mentioned before, the body of the Portuguese Man Of War mainly consists out of a gas filled organ (used as a sail) that can grow between 9 to 30 centimetre and can reach a height of 15 centimetre. Below this gas-filled organ we can find the tentacles (Dactylozooids) that can grow up to 50 meters in length! They use these tentacles to paralyze their pray making it a lot easier to eat them.

The Portuguese Man Of War seems invincible, but like many animals it has predators, like the Loggerhead Turtle that eats these types of jellyfishes, they don't even care if it has venomous tentacles or not.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com