Living Things Cnidaria: The Hidden World of Jellyfish, Anemones, and Coral

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-hosts Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole dive into the fascinating world of cnidarians—a group of animals that includes jellyfish, anemones, and coral. Despite their simple structures, these creatures have complex life cycles and unique adaptations that make them some of the most intriguing marine animals on the planet. From their stinging cells to their ability to transform between body forms, cnidarians are as alien as they are beautiful. Join us as we explore the strange and wonderful lives of these ocean dwellers.

Perfect for marine biology enthusiasts, nature lovers, and anyone curious about the creatures that make our oceans so unique.

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• 19:28 [Ad] Wild Times: Wildlife Education
• 20:09 (Cont.) Living Things: Cnidaria

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura.
And I'm Katy, and holy cannoli, it's season eight. I can't believe it.
Me neither. I mean, we never stick with anything this long, and here we are still doing it. In fact, this is the 100th episode that we're doing.
No way.
Can you believe it?
What? And in honor of that, we're actually gonna be doing a live Q&A session next Friday night on Zoom, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
If you private message us on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, we can send you the link for that meeting because we're not just gonna leave it open-ended, you know. That can go terribly wrong very quickly. But we love to see our listeners, all of you, you know, those that we've heard from before and new people.
We know that there are listeners out there who regularly listen to us from Australia and Norway, and we want to meet you. So please come and join us next Friday night. All right, Katy, I think we're gonna get started.
What are we talking about today?
Today, we're gonna be talking about Nigerians and how they might seem alien and unknown, but they are, at least we think, some of the most fascinating and cool creatures on this earth. Sea creatures, anyway.
Sea creatures, yeah, yeah. Let's add that in there. Don't want to give them too much credit.
Yeah, right? All right, so this is one of the taxa-focused ones that we do. We've done several of these other ones throughout previous seasons.
So I'm gonna break it down, give a little intro into what they are. Then Laura's gonna go into characteristics. I'm gonna talk about the different types of Nigerians, and then we're each gonna talk about a specific species, which the species that I have is pretty cool.
I agree, and mine is too. And I definitely, again, like these higher-level taxon episodes we're doing, I definitely think we're going to need to come back and visit this section. Because I want to dive more into some of these classes.
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. All right, so Nigerians are weirdly fascinating creatures that belong to the phylum Nideria, of course, a diverse group of aquatic animals. Niderians represent a distinct group within the animal kingdom, sharing certain characteristics with other animal phyla while possessing unique traits of their own, which is what makes them a phyla.
And which I'll go into.
Yep. They're invertebrates because it would be creepy AF if they were not. Because, I mean, they're like see-through.
I mean, if you go to what?
We're talking about jellyfish and stuff.
So, but I mean, you know, Michael's around Halloween, all those things have skeletons, even if they don't really have skeletons.
Yeah, so creepy.
But yes, they are part of the invertebrate category of things.
And so they are a complete phylum, completely on their own. And when I say phylum, again, some other phylum that might be a little bit more familiar with are like arthropods, where eventually find bugs, chordata, which is pretty much every type. Yeah, anything else that you know with the spine and mollusks and other groups.
So it's like, we did the protists.
And then there's the plant phyla.
So Niderians, they're definitely a higher level classifications than I think what people think they are. Because there's not a whole lot to them. Like there's not a whole lot of moving down, if that makes sense, like more complex to more complex to more complex.
It's just, I don't know. I don't know. They're like a higher classification than I think what people think they are.
Yeah, because scientists, for anybody who hasn't listened to one of these texts on once before, scientists have grouped all living things into different categories. And you get more and more and more and more specific.
Yeah.
So we've got the animal kingdom, and then we move down into the phyla, and then we move down into the what? Kings plate, cards, class, order, family, yada yada.
And I mean, yes, Niderians go through all that. It's just they start, like they're just not as complex, like they're invertebrates.
Yeah, yeah.
There's not as much to them to be able to divide up, you know, all the different ones. Yeah, insanely a lot. So, all right, so that's just a little bit of the intro on them.
Laura, do you want to go ahead and go into the characteristics then?
Yeah, so this is what makes Niderians, Niderians. They all, you can find, these are animals, first of all. And again, I think some of these that we're going to talk about are things that you probably might not have known actually was an animal.
You might've thought it was a plant or something else. Like seriously.
I know, it's just so funny, because can you imagine like seeing an elephant and being like, I think that's a plant. You know what I mean?
I don't know what that is. Yeah.
So the Niderians, they're all animals. They live in all marine habitats and some freshwater ones. They're all carnivorous, meaning they all eat some kind of protein, like they eat other things.
They're all radially symmetrical, which is really cool. And that means that their parts are arranged symmetrically around a central axis. So picture wagon wheel, okay?
Like no matter where you cut that wagon wheel through the center, it's the same. Like it makes all these little pizza pie slices that look identical to each other.
Just don't pizza pie a jellyfish.
They have no nervous system within their heads. So they're not like us in that way. They instead have, most of them have a nerve net.
Which is cool. Like that is a whole other neat thing.
That they can function without a centralized brain. Instead, they've just got random nerves that are connected throughout the whole body. And they can still make decisions, just not quite like we can.
They have two cell layers rather than three, like we do. So like your skin is made up of three different layers of stuff, like the germ layers. These guys only have two.
So they're a little bit more simple. And these are actually like one of the simplest organisms, besides like that are starting to get more, this is the simplest yet most complicated. This is somewhere in between.
So they have-
They're simply complex.
Yes, yeah, there's really no better way to say it. They're not as simple as like an amoeba.
Yeah, no.
They're nowhere near as complicated as something like any animal with a backbone. Because like I said, two cell layers rather than three, their cells are divided into tissues, but they don't have any organs, which is weird.
Yeah, which is weird.
So what does that mean? It means that similar cells are associated into groups called tissues. Okay, so like they've got like tentacle tissue and like, you know, some other things, but not no organs.
They have no stomach. They have no centralized brain. Like I said, they don't have any kidneys.
Not their kidneys.
And you're like, well, how the heck did they survive without a stomach? Because they do eat. And that's because digestion is done extracellularly.
It's done outside the cells. So there's just a cavity inside of something like a jellyfish, just a hole. And then it digests in the hole.
And then the cells just suck up stuff. So it's kind of like how there are some other animals you might have heard of that digest on the outside of their bodies. Things like what?
Like sea urchins and starfish. I think that too. Anyway, this is a little different.
And respiration and excretion, so breathing and going to the bathroom, are done by individual cells, not organs. So they don't have lungs, they don't have kidneys. Instead, each little cell is pulling in oxygen, and each little cell is sending out waste, which is gross.
Where's the butthole? They don't have one. Actually, they say a lot of them, it comes right back out the mouth hole.
I mean, it's efficient?
Yes, yes. All of them have some sort of rigid structure. Even though they don't have a backbone, they do have something inside of them that makes them a little bit more rigid.
It's every time.
It depends on what the species is really, or what they're made out of. It could be chitin, it could be calcium carbonate, could be something called gorgonin proteins, which is a cool thing. And then here's where we get into the really cool, weird stuff.
They have two body forms, guys. This is so wild, this is where we're like, these are aliens.
Yes, 100%.
Because before this, you could be like, all right, whatever, they're talking about something that's like an amoeba or something weird like that. No, this has two different bodies.
Completely different bodies.
Completely different bodies. It's almost like they go from being a plant to being an animal.
Yes, which is, yeah, whole other weird.
It's so weird. So there are two body forms. One is called the polyps and the medusa.
So of the four classes that Katy's gonna go into, three of them go through both body forms.
There's actually five.
Oh, five.
Okay.
So I guess, depending on who you ask, because you know scientists can never agree.
Freaking, yeah.
Majority of them go through both of these within their life cycle.
Yeah.
So kind of how does this happen? Oh, and that some of these classes that Katy's gonna talk about spend more time in one life form than another.
Which would make sense, yeah.
Kind of like if you guys listen to our Mosses and Ferns episode, we talked about how there's the gamete fight and the spore fight.
Oh yeah, that's a good comparison. Yeah, I didn't think about that.
Yeah, it's a little bit like that in that.
I mean, kind of. It's a stretch, but go with this, guys.
Okay. So anyway, more explanation is needed. Okay, so the medusa, this is what most of us think of when we hear the word jellyfish, because up until now, you're like, Laura, what the heck is a cnidarian?
It's jellyfish, anemones, coral, and some other things that Katy's gonna tell you about. But this, the medusa body form, is when we hear the word jellyfish, this is what you're thinking of. Most of them are typically bell or umbrella shaped with tentacles that dangle from the edges.
They have a tube-like structure in the middle called the manubrium, which hangs down a little bit and contains the mouth. They swim really slow. Like, they can swim, but it's usually like more floating.
And they reproduce typically a, they reproduce sexually to create larvae. Okay, so they are releasing stuff into the ocean to reproduce with sperms and eggs. And then that is creating these tiny, tiny little larvae that look like amoeba themselves.
They're just like a tiny little thing with little frilly edges that's swimming through the water until finally it falls to wherever it's going to land and goes into the next body form. So they metamorphosize into the polyp. So the polyp kind of looks like an underwater flower, but it's an animal, not a plant.
Which is crazy, yeah.
So they have little stalks that attach to a surface with tentacles that reach upwards. So think upside down jellyfish, but with a stalk. They cannot move.
So they are stuck in one place, very much like a plant. You can either find them alone, they can just live all by themselves, or be found in massive colonies, like coral. And then sometimes the ones that live in colonies might actually take on specific functions for the entire colony acting like a superorganism, which we talked about in the last episode with bees.
Oh yeah. So they're kind of eusocial like that. This stage, this is also where it gets weird, because why would they bother reproducing twice?
I don't know.
Yeah, they make it.
We reproduce sexually. That's it, you have a baby, it grows up. These guys have a baby, turns into kind of what looks like a plant, then that plant reproduces asexually.
That means no sperm involved. This is like a little bud comes off. They're just a little piece comes off.
That is the new Medusa. So the jellyfish, it's like a baby jellyfish.
Yeah, teeny tiny.
Floats up into the water, and it's ready to be a grownup and reproduce sexually. So they're reproducing twice in their life. Yeah, one time sexually mixing up those genes, one cloning themselves.
It seems excessive. I mean, as I say, it seems excessive unless it was like both sexually.
But having a clone of myself seems kind of cool too.
It would be, I mean, listen, I have a lot to do. I work full time. I have like stuff on the side.
I'm a mom. Like having a clone of me would be fantastic. Yeah.
A teeny tiny one.
It's just like the tiny, tiny one, just a tiny Katy in my pocket that I can just does all my paperwork. She just does all my paperwork. That's it.
A mole that comes off your arm that is sentient.
All right. You just made it creepy, Laura.
Creepy. I mean, it's cool, but it's gross. Anyway, coral are always polyps, but still reproduce both sexually and asexually.
So even though they don't go through the two body forms, they're still doing the weird, complicated stuff. Okay. So if that didn't totally blow your mind and make you fall asleep, here's the, in my opinion, the coolest part and what really makes them cnidarians and why they're called cnidarians, is because they have organelles, which are like organs, but tinier, called nematicists.
And we have brought these up on the podcast before.
I don't remember what.
It was the venomous one.
Oh, was it? Okay. Well, that would make sense.
Yeah. And so in the like the venomous toxin, toxic nature, that's what it was called. Listen to toxic nature.
We talk more about it. But only cnidarians have these nematicists. So cnidarians, nematicists, that's what it gives them their name.
They are these organelles are made by a special cell on their bodies called a nidoblast, which is a pretty cool word. Nematicists are basically like little capsules with a lid. Okay.
And with the proper stimuli, that little lid will pop open and a coiled, hollow and typically barbed thread explosively bursts out of it using hydrostatic pressure. Okay. Which is like water.
Like it's using, it just, imagine this tiny little coiled up barbed thread. Pouches, pumps out of the-
I mean, that would be convenient for humans at some point. Just to be like, don't touch me.
So the thread twists as it uncoils, like a little teeny corkscrew, and it drills into whatever tissue it comes into contact with. It doesn't just pop out, it drills-
Yeah, it hurts.
And these threads, because they're hollow, they typically contain some kind of toxin to fend off, well, poison, but it becomes a venom because it is injected into you, to fend off predators or to capture prey. So it's doing two different things. It's using it to eat, and it's using it to keep bad stuff away.
The thread then breaks off from the nematocyst, and some of them even wrap around the victim. So you're just stuck with these barbed threads that even wrap around your body. They can cause pain, paralysis, and even death.
Even to humans, they've been known to cause death, like the Portuguese Man O War nematocysts are no freaking joke. But it's not guaranteed. You can touch a nematocyst and not die, unless you're a tiny fish, and then you're probably dead more.
But yeah, so those are the things that make the cnidarians unique, and nothing else. Nothing else has nematocysts. They've got those weird two body forms going on, and then the other stuff that is...
There's always exceptions, of course.
Always exceptions. I just realized that we gave me the different types, and I always get stuck saying scientific names of things I can't say. Oh no.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What lets it go? Okay, so there are five different classes of cnidarians.
So the first one is Hydrozoa. Hydrozoans are mostly marine cnidarians that can be either solitary or colonial. Kind of like Laura said, they can be alone, they can be solitary.
I didn't really find if there's conditions. You know what I mean?
Well, a lot of them I was finding, all species, they were just saying, oh, it could be solitary or it could be like...
Interesting. Yeah, it must be the conditions.
Yeah, so I'm not sure. So these ones, the Hydrozoa, they exhibit both the polyp and medusa stages in their life cycle. So the polyp form is usually small and tubular, like Laura was explaining, while the medusa stage resembles a miniature jellyfish.
An example of this species is the Portuguese Man of War. And so if you've never seen these, these are huge tops. I mean, they have ton, like, I don't even know, it almost looks like a bubble that floats above the surface.
And then stuff like the tentacles and everything hang below it. And they can get like huge, like way big.
Well, at least the tentacles can.
Yeah, the tentacles can. And so anyway, so like Laura said, these are the venomous ones. They're just floating.
I don't know, it's like a balloon as a venom balloon, just floating on top of the water. And so these are the hydrozoa. So that's the first one.
The second one is the psychophosa. Guys, I don't know if I'm saying any of these right.
Definitely the hydrozoa is right.
Hydrozoa is right. But psychosoa are commonly known as the quote unquote true jellyfish. They're predominantly marine and exist primarily as free swimming medusa.
The true jellyfish possess a saucer like shape with a bell shaped body and trailing tentacles. Their life cycle does typically involve a polyp stage, but is often like less conspicuous than other Niderians. I tried to look up what that specifically meant, but.
I feel like they're just like, they're only at for a teeny bit. They're mostly in the medusa stage.
Yeah, to the point where like you're almost always going to just see them in the medusa stage.
You're going to see a jellyfish. You're not going to see the weird polyp version.
Yeah.
Of the jellyfish.
And this one, like the quote unquote true jellyfish is this includes the moon jellyfish, which is pretty much, if you think jellyfish, it's the moon jellyfish that you're thinking of.
Yeah, the round one with like the little tentacles.
The ones in the zoos, like you're all, it's going to be moon jellyfish. All right, let's see here. Number three, the class is cuboza, cuboboza.
Oh, oh.
Or the box jellyfish.
Yeah, yeah.
So these are known for the box shape, the bell, like the box shape bell at the top, and cube-like appearance in a way. They are exclusively marine and possess a potent venom that can be very harmful to humans. These cnidarians have complex visual systems compared to other ones.
Yeah, with sophisticated, several sources have said eye, but it's not like an eyeball. Yeah, that would be, again, terrifying. They had eyeballs, photo receptors.
The horseshoe crab.
Yes, yes.
They got those weird light-sensing stuff.
Yeah, it seemed like it was the same thing. So it makes them the most advanced among all nidarians of this class.
Which is interesting, considering they're practically invisible and so small.
I mean, that's why. So one example would be the sea wasp, and that's a notable grouping or example of a box of jellyfish. Fourth one, anthozoa.
Anthozoans comprise a diverse group of nidarians that exclusively exist as polyps. Just polyps, they never grow up. They include familiar organisms such as sea anemones, corals, and sea fans.
Anthozoans lack a medusa stage in their life cycle. Instead, they develop into sea-sail polyps that attach themselves to various substrates. A prominent species example is the Great Barrier Reef building the coral that we all know and love.
It's so crazy to think of coral as animals.
Yeah, it's so bizarre.
They're in the same thing as a jellyfish. It looks so different.
I feel like scientists are picky over ones that they don't need to be picky about, and then they are not looking at things that they probably need to reconsider.
Well, it's just so crazy. Can you even imagine, Katy, being the scientist who first connected the dots of the medusa and the polyp from the same animal?
With the same thing? Yeah, I would never believe it. I would not believe it.
The fifth one is the Starzoa. These are known as the stock jellyfish. They are often considered the most primitive class of cnidarians.
They exhibit a unique body plan characterized by a stock that attaches them to the substrate. Stratazoans lack a medusa stage and primarily dwell in shallow waters.
I think they're pretty rare too.
Yeah, they very much so. I think probably because they are so primitive, they're so old. I don't know if they're like, I don't want to say they're probably like dying off, but just yeah, very, very rare.
But an example is the Halicitis auricula, known for its bell-shaped body and branched tentacle bearing arms.
They're pretty. I looked up a picture of them. Yeah, they're pretty.
So those are the five different classes or groupings of them.
Whenever you were saying all the anthrazoids, so if anybody wants to know how to pronounce those or learn any taxonomy, Mr. Ray in Finding Nemo, which I've had to watch numerous times. Numerous times lately because of Laura. She's obsessed with Finding Nemo.
He sings the song about what's the species.
That's right.
He goes there, it's peripheral, so the anthrazoids cause the foa.
That's right.
Oh, Mr. Ray teaches good things. Okay.
Mr. Ray. Thanks, Mr. Ray.
Finding Nemo and Finding Dory have been on repeat here at this house, which is great.
Yeah, I was going to say those are good ones at least.
Okay, so we talked about what makes a cnidarian a cnidarian. What are the types of cnidarians? And then now Katy and I are just going to choose two species to highlight.
And like we said, we're going to have to dive into this again another day because we should really talk about corals and things like that and what makes them different because they are really freaking different than a cnidarian.
Very different, yeah.
But two cool species just to get you even more interested in cnidarians because before today, you probably didn't even know they were a thing. Mine is actually, it's called Stylobates calcifer, also known as the Heme-Kinkara cnidemini.
Because that's an easier name to say than its scientific name.
Yeah, no.
You know?
Yeah, well, it's a Japanese. So who knows? Actually, I'm probably saying the Japanese wrong.
Right?
Heme and Kinkara. It's actually a newly discovered species. Oh, cool.
From 2022.
Whoa, newly, newly discovered then.
2021 or 2022, one of the two. So it is a type of cnidemini. And it lives around Japan at about somewhere between 100 to 400 meters deep, which is pretty deep.
Yeah.
It's pink in color. It's lovely. And it's a really tiny and cute.
It's only one to two centimeters high.
I wonder nobody found it. Right.
And three to four centimeters in diameter.
How the heck do you find that in the ocean?
They were trawling, and they kept pulling it up. It was known before it was technically classified. It's like so many species.
Yeah, they see it. They call them something. Yep.
Yeah, they called it the human kinkara, sea anemone.
Gotcha.
And then finally, they were like, oh, this is actually its own thing. But it does have some unique things, because otherwise, why, Laura, are you talking about this tiny anemone? Well, for starters, it's found only on the shells of a specific hermit crab, which is how they found it.
Oh, interesting.
Because it lives on its little shell. And boy, the hermit crab's name is no joke here, so I'll do my best.
Possibly.
Dude, better than what I could probably do, so.
That was a good guess. So this, it attaches to the top of the shell by secreting a hard substance known as our, I had to practice this word early today, carcinoecium. Carcinoecium, I think, carcinoecium.
This secretion is shell-like and covers the shell of the crab. It covers the shell that the crab is already inside.
Okay.
You know, hermit crabs live in snail shells. This anemone covers it and then secretes a shell all over the outside. When it comes time to change, the crab pinches, prods, pokes, and peels until it lasts the anemones.
Peeling is so good.
It's like prying this sucker. It's determined to take its anemone with it. Some anemones actually can kind of move.
Their bodies move a little bit. This anemone apparently does zero to help out its hermit crab friend, because it took like two full days to get it to move from one shell to another.
Geez.
So it finally gets it to move on to the new shell. A study of this species shows, for the first time, this is the first time they've ever had video of a crab transferring it. So it's super exciting for them because it's taken to 2022 for them to see the crab.
So they videoed it for this two-day change. So it shows that, and the showing of this transfer and how slow it is and how reluctant the anemone is and all that stuff.
Reluctant anemone. I feel like that's a bad name.
Definitely. That's a great one. It seems to show that this sea anemone, and here I'm quoting from the scientific article, may not produce a carcinosium synchronously to its host growth.
So perhaps it is not growing as fast as the host needs it to, or like when the host needs it to. It's like lagging behind a little bit. And that the host hermit crab's growth must not depend entirely on the sea anemone.
Because it's changing first. They're not happening at the same time. Whereas before, scientists I think felt that this was much closer.
Like one absolutely depended on the other one. So this mutualistic relationship between hermit crabs and anemones isn't at all new. There's at least 35 other species that do this.
I mean, it's really good for both of them, because the crab gets protection from predators and parasites due to the stinging tentacles that are on their back. And the anemone gets a free ride and more access to food. Because the crab, I mean, first of all, the anemone is like face up.
It's a polyp stage. And so it's eating what they term marine snow, which is disgusting.
It is so gross.
Particles falling through the ocean that it's eating. But it's also eating whatever the crab doesn't finish. And it's not hunting.
It's just eating shrapnel, essentially, from the crab.
Crab shrapnel.
Crab shrapnel, another good name. The crab may also not need to find a new shell so soon, and the anemone doesn't need to change its substrate so often. Because its shell is being reinforced, so it doesn't need to change so much.
There's a really, if you want to know more, there's a really good Magic School Best episode about this. I distinctly remember it. But there are two things that are unique about this sea anemone compared to the other ones that live with hermit crabs.
One is that it was found so deep, because that's pretty atypical. This is, like I said, 100 to 400 meters deep. So that's what?
300 to 1200 feet deep.
Sure.
I think meters are three feet.
Yeah, ish.
Ish, ish, right, because it's not a yardstick. OK, sorry, Americans over here just trying to convert.
Yeah, right. Why can't we? I seriously, never mind.
That's a whole other discussion about how we should just move to the metric system. But whatever, I digress.
But the other thing that's unique is that rather than stopping, once it covers the crab shell with its hard carcinocium, it actually extends the shell. So it doesn't just cover it. It keeps on building and extends the shell to be even larger.
The article I read likens it to adding a veranda to the shell.
The little crab gets a veranda.
He's all fancy.
We've got fancy crabs over here.
I have an anemone that can build me a veranda.
But the veranda is not nearly as strong as the snail shell is.
I mean, that would make sense.
Because it's secreting some stuff, but it's not like double thick. However, it is important to note that not all species of this hermit crab had the anemones on their backs. So scientists are thinking that these anemones might not be that common.
And which is why the crabs are so freaking determined to move them from one shell to another. Give up on the process.
Yeah.
Because they're like, there's only so many out here, we need to transfer. And then the last thing I'll mention before handing it over to Katy is that this, another thing that I just kind of thought was cool about this species, on a totally nerd note, even more nerdy than talking about Cnidarians, is that this species isn't actually named after a character. The character's name is Calcifer.
So remember its name was, scientific name had Calcifer in it. And Calcifer is a character from Howl's Moving Castle, which is a movie based on a novel. It's like an anime movie.
And Calcifer is a fire demon that was bound to the moving house.
This is intense.
So like pink anemone bound to a house that moves.
Yeah.
So like its name comes from this character from a cool movie that I like. Cool. And that's the, yeah, this new type of anemone.
Cool, cool. All right. So mine is definitely different.
It is the Turritopus dorani, aka the immortal jellyfish. And that's just what I'm going to call it. So I don't have to stumble.
I've vaguely heard about this.
This is pretty neat. So again, it's known as the immortal jellyfish or the Benjamin Button jellyfish. Yeah.
So it's a small, relatively, fairly popular jellyfish that has captivated the scientific community and those within that interested public niche.
Like us.
Yeah. Right. This is cool.
What makes it the immortal, the Benjamin Button, what we get all that from is it has a unique ability to revert back to an earlier stage in its life cycle. And so it's earned the reputation of being potentially biologically immortal. So we're going to go ahead and dive into that.
Yeah, no pun intended jellyfish. So Laura gave a really good breakdown of the different stages. And so let's before we jump into that, let's go ahead and do their natural habitat and everything.
So the immortal jellyfish is a species of jellyfish that can be found in various oceans around the world, primarily in temperate and tropical regions. It does prefer warm, nutrient-rich waters, making it common around Mediterranean Sea, Caribbean Sea. However, because of ships and everything moving, it's gotten very widespread over the last decade or so.
The species is well adapted to different weather, water conditions, and can tolerate a wide range of salinity levels and temperatures, which is unique for most sea life. It's normally pretty small gaps. This adaptability allows it to occupy diverse marine habitats, including reefs, estuaries, and just all kinds of things that most marine mammals you wouldn't find them in.
The thing has a lot going for it. It can live anywhere, tolerate most things, and is immortal.
And is immortal. Yeah. So its ability to thrive in various environments contributes definitely to its wide distribution and success as a species.
As a diet, the immortal jellyfish is a carnivorous predator. Its diet contains mostly plankton organisms, fish eggs, and even very small mollusks, if it can. These prey items provide the jellyfish, obviously with essential nutrients, regarded for its survival and growth.
The immortal jellyfish captures its prey by using the specialized tentacles like Laura talked about, armed with the stinging cells. And then just like she said, like whenever that suitable prey comes in contact with the tentacles, the metasites discharge, immobilizing the prey so it eats just like every other jellyfish. So let's get into what makes it truly unique, which is the aging process, which to date is the only species known to man to be able to do this, to be able to revert back to an earlier stage.
So a new jellyfish life begins, like Laura said, with a fertilized egg, which grows into larval stage and then goes into the polyp. Eventually, as that polyp forms an outgrowth called a bud, may produce a separate segment stacked on top of one another that can break away from the rest of the colony. Like little clones.
Yep, little tiny clones. For most other jellyfish, this stage is the end of your life. Once you hit that medusa, you're done.
You're good. You've done your job. The immortal jellyfish, however, is able to, when it faces some sort of environmental stress.
Now, I'm not talking like predation or anything like that. Yeah, too sudden. I'm talking more like, even though it is very diverse, if it is stressed out, like starvation, it can get like, if it's injured, it can go backwards.
It can revert back to being a tiny blob of tissue, which then changes into the sexually immature polyp phase of its life. So it's kind of like thinking of sort of like a...
Like a larva.
Yeah. So think kind of like a butterfly turning back into a caterpillar or a frog like reverting back, like gets an injury and a frog's like, oh my God, I need to be a tadpole again.
How many humans wish they could do this, man? Like just go back to childhood when things are easy.
Right? When things are...
Every week at least.
When things are too stressed, just let's go back to being a kid.
I don't think I'm done with it.
Right? So even though they aren't truly immortal, because obviously it can be consumed by predators or killed by other things, their ability to switch back and forth between the life, like the different stages in response to stress means that in theory, they could live forever.
So if they never get eaten, they could live forever.
Yep. They just keep going and going. So due to its...
Have they kept one in a lab to see how long?
I didn't find what the longest one was, but they have been doing a lot of research on them. So due to its rejuvenation capability, the immortal jellyfish has been deemed biologically immortal. So I guess they just keep seeing.
Yeah. While it's not invincible to disease or predation, the jellyfish's ability to continuously cycle between its polyp and medusa stages theoretically allows it to evade natural death caused by aging. This remarkable characteristic sets them apart.
So this unique characteristic, because they have been studying it, it has potentially drastically...
Oh my gosh.
Like the understanding of that is immense. It's what's killing.
I mean, essentially like what we die from, even if you never got sick or something, would be like your tissues, your DNA actually deteriorates over time. So if our DNA could stop deteriorating...
Reverse. Not even stop. These guys reverse back.
We wouldn't even have to go back to kids, even if we could just stop the aging process.
So there's a few different key areas that scientists have been studying these guys for because it is obviously unique. They've been studying this on a cellular or molecular level. They've been looking at the mechanisms behind why they do what they do or how they're able to.
What genes are turning on that lets this happen?
Understanding how the jellyfish can reverse its aging could have significant implications for regenerative medicine and potential applications in human health, like regenerating tissues and things. Scientists have been investigating the genetic and epigenetic factors that contribute to that. It's called transdifferentiation process.
They're the only ones that can do it. Go back. They're hoping that as they keep studying this, and if you look up a lot of the research, it is so in-depth that it is really, really fascinating.
Another aspect that they've really been researching is the environmental impact because of the resilience of the immortal jellyfish and changing like back to its, it has an environmental stressor. Even though, again, even though it is very adaptable, it sees an environmental stressor, it all of a sudden like rolls back. They've definitely attracted interests from scientists studying climate change actually, and its impact on marine ecosystems.
So by investigating the jellyfish's response to environmental stressors, researchers aim to gain insight into the broader ecological consequences of a changing planet. Because they're able to kind of, I don't want to, like, I didn't read too much into it, but I assume like, because like, hey, let's see, like, what's the tolerance of this immortal jellyfish? And like, if this one is the only thing to survive, like, what does that threshold look like?
So not only that, another area is lifecycle and reproduction. Scientists have conducted extensive research on the lifecycle reproductive strategies of these guys. Just, they've studied the factors that trigger the transformation from polyp to Medusa stage, like, the normal way, so that they can understand, like, how the heck it goes backwards.
And then the obvious one is the implications for aging and longevity with their potential biological immorality. Immortality. Sorry.
Immortality. Dude, I need glasses.
But just the immoral jellyfish, another great band name.
Also, I don't know what we need to draw doing, but we need to draw a jellyfish sinning, and I don't know what that looks like, but that would be so funny. Anyway, dude, on a side note, I so need glasses. I cannot see.
Talk about mentally aging yourself, but I've needed glasses for a while. But still, anyway. So they're looking at exploring obviously the genetics and trying to figure that out, because like Laura was saying, even if we can't reverse human, is there something we can do for Alzheimer's dementia?
All these things that we start seeing as we progress in it that are very, very age dependent, could we stop those from happening? Like, yes, we know that our organs are going to eventually fail, or something's going to fail, but are the things that we could learn from these jellyfish that we could stop? So in conclusion, the immortal jellyfish continues to definitely intrigue scientists.
I mean, I think it's fascinating, and I think they're going to keep studying it for years and years and years to come.
Because the money to be made if this is crap.
Right? Holy crap.
We're going to let this go. People spend so much money on anti-aging stuff.
The amount of botox.
And all the other creams and all that. Yeah, everything. People would be about this.
And all the rich people who would be like, I'm going to die now.
Right.
Like, if I can get this jellyfish serum, I'm good.
So that is Nidirians. I mean, hopefully you guys learned something. They are pretty neat.
And I think, I mean, everybody, for the most part, has probably seen a jellyfish, but I don't think anybody has really stopped to think like, what the heck is this?
Right. Where do we put this in the spectrum of animals?
What is it? What the heck is this thing?
Coral and jellyfish are in the same. Yeah.
Scientists take another look at it.
Groupers and splitters or whatever.
What is it?
The lumpers and the splitters.
The lumpers and the splitters. Yeah. All right, guys.
We'll go ahead and reach out to us on Twitter, which is probably, I think, the social media platform we're most active on, and then make sure you support us on Patreon, and we'll see you guys next week then for that.
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Bye.