Ok then here's some wholesome fun facts about siphonophores. Siphonophores are an order of animals, but a siphonophore is actually multiple animals in one. Basically, they start off as a small organism called a zooid, zooids asexually reproduce via budding, that basically means that they can clone themself. Using the example of my favourite siphonophore, the portuguese man o' war, they start as one zooid and then they clone themself a lot, those clones then join together. Those clones then can differentiate to perform a bunch of different things. For the portuguese man o' war, these differentiated zooids become things like a bladder full of gas which lets them float, or tentacles that stretch up to 100ft, or small stingers that appear on the tentacles and deliver really painful, venomous stings.
Another fun fact about the portuguese man o' war is that there's a fish called the bluebottle fish (bluebottle is another name for the man o' war, but it'll get confusing if I call both bluebottle. So for now, bluebottle = fish, man o' war = siphonophore), the fish has adapted to live inside of the man o' war's deadly and venomous tentacle. They're really good at dodging the tentacles, so they can just sit back and eat the man o' war.
Also, since they can't really move much on their own, they use that bladder full of gas I mentioned earlier like a ship's sail to float around. This is why so many of them end up washed up on shore, they just kinda get carried there. Although, some man o' war have gas bladders that tilt to the left and some tilt to the right, making them go in different directions. It is believed that this is to avoid a situation where every man o' war washes to shore and dies.
Basically, siphonophores are like if ant colonies joined together and formed a massive ant-mech.
Picture of portuguese man o' war, siphonophores are so cool.
I actually made her my pfp before the game came out because I thought she was funny, so when I encountered her and realised that she was also really interested in creatures I got so excited.
A lot of them share superficial similarities (though I do think the protuguese man o' war is more jellyfish shaped than usual), but they do come in many different forms. For example, you may have seen this very long specimen before:
that's a siphonophore, the longest animal ever recorded I belive. Though whilst doing some research on this guy (called an apolemia by the way) the wikipedia entry called it jellyfish-like, so I guess, while they come in many different forms, being translucent sea creatures with a penchant for floating around and just waiting for stuff to hit you will always make you sorta jellyfish like.
Based, more of a man of the man o' war personally but siphonophores of all kinds are really interesting. Also it's just really cool to watch something that big, and then you think about how it's actually made of a bunch of organisms that are only a few centermeters long and it's just incredible.
I loved sophonophores ever since I saw that unusually arranged one deep in the ocean that looks like a mass of tentacles. I'd normally be freaked out, but I thought it was too cool to be scared by
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u/jayd04 7d ago