Information about Jellyfish
- Jellyfish are simple, transparent sea animals, varying in size from an inch to over 100 feet.
- Jellyfish have no backbone or skeleton and thus are not actually fish at all.
- The body of a jellyfish looks as if it were made of jelly. It is easy to
see, then, how jellyfish got the "jelly" in their name. It is not easy
to see how they got the "fish" in their name, for they are not much like
fish, except that they do live in water.
- Most jellyfish live in warm water.
- The bodies are soft and often umbrella-shaped with stinging tentacles around the edge, for getting food.
- Jellyfish eat true fish and other sea animals. They first paralyze these anímal, with poison darts on their feelers.
- Jellyfish are of the group (phylum) called coelenterates.
- The animals propel themselves by squirting jets of water from this opening.
- Some jellyfish have beautiful
colors. Some shine at night. Some are almost transparent. Some are so
soft that they collapse when they are out of water. Others are more like
gristle and keep their shape
- Jellyfish are actually the medusa stage in the life cycle of certain coelenterates.
- The Portuguese man-of-war is one of the most unusual of jellyfish. Each
colorful float actually supports a whole colony of animals.
