rhamphotheca: Look Into My Eeyes. All ~30 of Them… The…
Look Into My Eeyes. All ~30 of Them…
The abundance of beautiful red eyespots on this Penicillate Jellyfish is striking but not unusual for a Hydrozoan. A feature that is noteworthy is that nobody has seen a polyp stage for this animal, just this medusa stage. The polyps could be small and difficult to spot, or this species might just skip that life stage.
And: they’ve got rhythm. A study in 1988 found that while swimming, the animals flex their bells at a frequency very near the mechanical resonant frequency of their body, which increases the amplitude of their movement by 40% and decreases energy use by around 25%. Is this unusual for jellyfish? Hard to say. We might have to go out and test them all…
Read more: Encyclopedia of Life
Swimming study: Demont, M. E.; Gosline, J. M. 1988. Mechanics of Jet Propulsion in the Hydromedusan Jellyfish, Polyorchis Pexicillatus I. Mechanical Properties of the Locomotor Structure. Journal of Experimental Biology. 134(1): 313-332.
Photo: Lovell and Libby Langstroth via CalPhotos
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/68294517602.
