The Portuguese Man o' War

in nature •  7 years ago 

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The Portuguese man o' war is not a jelly fish or even a single animal, but many, which are joined together and without each other they cannot survive on their own. The man o' war is pretty impressive looking as in the picture above because it is bioluminescent. It gets it's name from a sailing ship which the looks similar to the floating bit of the man o' mar. The "sail" is always above water and is filled with gas that allows it to float, it can however, be deflated and allows the man o' war to be submerged for a while. It cannot swim, but is blown with the wind as the wind catches the "sail" and this causes it to be blown onto beaches as in the picture beneath. Because they are blown by the wind they can be found in large groups and live in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

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It's tentacles can be very long and are toxic, used to catch fish and squid and are very painful if caught on the skin. They are able to paralyze fish and cause symptoms of allergic reactions and whip like stripes for humans and can very rarely be fatal. The tentacle are retractable to bring the prey to the digestive animals near the "sail". They get eaten by Loggerhead Turtles and Sea Swallows.

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It is hard to believe by looking at the baby loggerhead turtle that it actually eats the Portuguese man o' war.

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The sea swallow is a sea slug that eats the portuguese man o' war and it looks like something you would find in Pokemon, not the ocean.

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Wow.... Nice post going to resteem you post @mannyfig1956

Thank you!

Wow.photography of the day.i resteem your post.i hope your post will be in hot list.best of luck

Thank you. the photography wasn't mine, but the guy who did the 1st one is really skilled, his name is Mathew smith if you want to look up any of his pictures,

I liked the last picture with Pokémon :)

It blew my mind when I 1st saw the picture of one.

So Beautiful!

It really is.

:-)

great post, thx for sharing!

Very interesting :)

wow that really??

It was pretty crazy to me.

Nice post indeed and I really liked those pictures,keep it up. Reteemed already.

Thank you.

Just amazing photography

follow me @nwsworld check out my photography

I had no idea about any of this, thanks for the extra learning.

I am glad that you liked it and learned from it.

Wow! that's amazing! it looks so surreal that is's hard to believe that something like this exist.

That is exactly what I was thinking when I wrote it. I didn't even know about sea swallows.

I miss Oahu now...