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Four Hidden Species of Portuguese Man-O’-War

posted by hubie on Sunday December 22, @07:41AM   Printer-friendly
Science /dev/random

owl writes:

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/11/11/occasional-paper-four-hidden-species-of-portuguese-man-o-war/

There's been a a certain amount of negativity floating around lately. So, let's talk about a toxic, venomous freak of nature and the parasite that afflicts it.

Biology warning, this gets slightly squicky.

Let's start with the toxic, venomous freak of nature: the Portuguese man-o'-war.

Have you ever seen a Portuguese Man o'War? – If you've spent a lot of time in warm ocean waters, you've probably encountered one of these guys. They're hard to miss! They come in a variety of colors — pink, blue, purple — and they're pretty prominent, floating on the surface of the ocean like discarded party balloons. And if you've ever been stung by one, well, you probably remember that. Their stings aren't lethal to humans, but they're welt-inducing and painful.

So it's a jellyfish. Except it isn't really: it's several jellyfish, smooshed together. And here's where the "freak of nature" part kicks in.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.10.602499v2.full

Original Submission


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday December 22, @10:33AM (2 children)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Sunday December 22, @10:33AM (#1386166)

    So it's a jellyfish

    Well, TFA got me fooled almost to the end. I really thought this was a really strangely-written historical piece about the conquests of the Portuguese empire.

    • (Score: 2) by higuita on Monday December 23, @03:26AM (1 child)

      by higuita (2465) on Monday December 23, @03:26AM (#1386237)

      Like the Portuguese Naval boats in ages of discovery, this jellyfish is dangerous and have a floating "sail" (similar to war ship version of the Portuguese Caravel). People attacked by both quickly learn that they should stay away and not repeat the experience.

      See the Battle of Diu [wikipedia.org], where a Portuguese fleet of 18 naval ships sunk ALL muslin join fleet (around 100-150 ships) organized to expel them, with only 32 men lost (from 800) and no ship lost. After that, most attacks were just isolated pirate attacks for transport ships for a long time, no one else wanted to risk losing most of their fleet in direct confrontation.

      So as i said, people learn to not mess with both and while the Portuguese naval forces are not as strong, this jellyfish is still at full of power

  • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday December 23, @10:28PM (1 child)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) on Monday December 23, @10:28PM (#1386290) Journal

    Thanks very much for linking both the paper and the interesting lay-version. The latter was a delight.

    "detachable free-swimming gonads" strikes me as an accurate description of some dating apps. :D

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