Watery giants

MADHAV GADGIL

Once upon a jelly fish Floating in the seas off Mangalore Thought she must see Bangalore So she sprouted a wing And took of with a zing, That watery giant of Mangalore!

Life originated in the sea and water remains the most abundant constituent of the bodies of most living creatures. But the champion water-lovers are jellyfish; some of whom are 98 per cent water. They are amongst the simplest of animals, umbrellas strung with long tentacles made up of just a few types of cells arranged in two layers.

Some jellyfish reach enormous sizes; the Lion's Mane has an umbrella two metres in diameter with 150 tentacles that may reach a length of 40 metres. They hunt shrimp with the help of special attacking cells loaded with a poison that come in three forms - piercing, wrapping and sticking. All the attacking cells are equipped with a little trigger, which sets them off the instant it is touched without waiting for an instruction from the primitive nervous system. This renders these simple bodied watery giants formidable predators, sometimes reaching incredible densities, clogging surface water of the sea for kilometres on end.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Tripping in the wild
Next     : From the golden age