This jellyfish seems unique to me:
Image: Wikipedia
Most people know not to poke a jellyfish, but some jellies can sting you without touching you – by detaching tiny bits of their body that float off into the sea and move around independently.
Upside-down jellyfish jettison small balls of stinging cells in a network of sticky mucus, to kill prey such as shrimp. The jellies then seem to suck in their dinner by pulsating.
It is as if we could spit out our teeth and they killed things for us somehow, says Cheryl Ames at Tohoku University in Japan. “It’s a real evolutionary novelty.” …
… Ames’s group has found that this happens because the creatures shed hollow balls of stinging cells up to half a millimetre wide. Dubbed cassiosomes, they carry hairs that can waft them around in circles to boost their chances of bumping into prey. [NewScientist (22 February 2020)]
And, as much as I admire evolution’s cleverness, I’m also a little creeped out.
