Friday, October 8, 2010

Royal Jelly!

Crown Jellyfish
    These jellies might just be the Royal jellies of the sea, I mean with a name like Crown Jellyfish how can you go wrong? 
The eye spots can be seen around the cap of the jellyfish while the whitish "dots" around the base are actually tentacles that are withdrawn. Jellyfish have a very advanced water vascular system that allows them to pump water in and out of their bodies thus pushing out or pulling in their tentacles.



The stinging cells or nematocysts are microscopic spring loaded darts found on the tentacles and are extremely sensitive to pressure. When touched, thousands can be discharged. This is the mechanism that normally allows them to capture their prey, ranging in size from microscopic plankton to small fish. Numerous mouths are found underneath the central frill of the jellyfish.


 The crown jellyfish is found at depths below 900m (3000 ft), where the water temperature is really cold. Also, the Crown jellyfish undergoes straight up and down movement from deep water in the daytime to shallow water at night in order to follow their prey, or catch their prey. 
crown Jellyfish are mostly found at mesopelagic depths (between 200m and 1000m, called the twilight zone) in all oceans worldwide, but mostly in the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic ocean. 


Unfortunately, this is all of the information that I could find on them so I really can't tell you if they are poisonous to humans( but they probably are!).

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