This one is NOT harmless, but it sure is beautiful. The Portuguese Man O' War is actually a colony of polyps, not a single organism. The tentacles can expand out a great distance beneath the gas filled float. You can pick up a Man O'War by the top of the float to impress people, only the tentacles have nematocysts (stinging cells). If you do attempt this little bit of showmanship, be sure to check for the stray tentacle that got flipped up over the top of the float....don't ask me how I know that.
2 comments:
I love (!) this photo. Hope you don't mind if I use it as my desktop photo. When I clicked on the photo, the detail was amazing. What type of camera do you use?
Oh...the subject matter. I use to run into Jellyfish of some sort all the time when I lived in San Diego. Sometimes they were so plentiful that one could really not swim in the ocean safely. For me, it was just another reason (along with Jaws) not to swim in the ocean. Oh! And add that lugworm to my list. Lakes rule!
Hick,
Thanks! This is another older slide that I had digitized at Wally World. I have a huge collection of wildlife shots from my " single, no kids, no responsibility, gonna be a famous wildlife photographer, spend days in a blind, buy film by the gross, this'll never end days"
This was taken with a manual focus, nonelectronic Minolta SRT-201 from the 70's. Modern cameras are not better, they are just easier so anyone can take a good shot...and that is a good thing.
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