Hello,this is Wild Suzhou.

As achild, I remember going to the beaches in Australia, and seeing these brightblue balloon-like objects washed up onto the shore. People would usually drawcircles around them, and I would help draw them too. Though they looked cool,everyone knew not to touch them, unless they wanted a very painful experience.

The blueballoons are known as bluebottles, or the Indo-Pacific Man O War. They have asimilar, deadlier relative, known as the Portuguese Man O War. They look likejellyfish, but are actually siphonophores. It’s a colony of polyps that allwork together. In this sense, they are kind of like coral, since they’re madeup of trillions of organisms. However, unlike coral, these polyps are not allthe same. Different groups of them have different functions, kind of likeorgans. In this sense, the bluebottle is like one animal.

There arefour groups of polyps that make up the blue bottle. The first one, usuallycalled “the float”, are the polyps that make up the gas-filled sac that lookslike a balloon.
Another group of polyps make up the stinging tentacles, which catch food byparalyzing prey. These tentacles can grow to be up to 10 meters long. Paralyzedprey is transferred to digestive tentacles, another group of polyps.Reproductive tentacles produce sperm and eggs, which grow into larva, or young.These larvae will divide themselves many times, each time doubling the amountof polyps. They do this until there are enough cells for a new colony and newblue bottle to be formed.

Not manyanimals prey on blue bottles, but some species of nudibranch, a type of seaslug, and also sea snails, feed on them. One species of nudibranch, known asthe pacific blue glaucus, has a diet that consists almost entirely ofbluebottles. They also store the stinging cells of the bluebottle, which theycan use as a defense against their own predators.

For WildSuzhou, I’m Ciana, thanks for listening and see you next time.