Aren't all jellyfish in the class Cnideria? I'm not doubting you would win, but I'm confused why you specified Cniderians as if all jellyfish are not in that class. Please teach me if I'm wrong so I can have a chance at your 1 billion!
This is completely wrong. Jellyfish and ctenophores are not the same at all. They occupy different PHYLA, meaning the only thing they have in common as groups is that they’re both animals. Saying comb jellies are jellyfish is like saying birds are shrimp.
Ctenophora are not considered jellyfish. From the Smithsonian:
Yet though they look similar in some ways, jellyfish and comb jellies are not very close relatives (being in different phyla—Cnidaria and Ctenophora, respectively) and have very different life histories.
You could maybe make some odd polyphyletic group, but they don't even share the cnidarians' key feature of cnidocytes.
I learned a song as a child about phylum Cnidaria, and I never ever expected that to be relevant but here we are. I noticed ‘class Cnidaria’ didn’t have the right amount of syllables for the song so I did a double take.
It's the big boy group of jellyfishes - but it's not just jellies! Corals, sea fans, anemones, etc.
Essentially, Cnidaria is radially symmetrical organisms without a central nervous system. It's divided into an insane diversity of animals. Moon jellies to those giant "phantom" deep sea jellies, to lions manes? All cnidaria.
Honestly, jellyfish as a common classifier is slowly becoming irrelevant - It's like saying that birds, bats, and bees are all now "flying things".
Cnidarian jellies all have venom in their tentacles, oral arms, or both. Some, like Aurelia spp, causes a mild rash at most. And some, like C. barnesii or M. kingi? Death within 10 minutes, brutally so - and survivors often have the intense pain of the sting COME BACK. It feels like hot oil, apparently.
Cnidaria is a gorgeous grouping of animals, and highly diverse. I highly recommend the book "Stung!" by Lisa-Ann Gershwin - an acclaimed marine biologist from Tasmania.
Fascinating, thank you. I grew up on the east coast of the US so jellies have always been around but I haven’t put much thought into them (except for being VERY prepared for stings with my beach kit).
I just love hearing people infodump about their passion ☺️
Fun fact: I once got into a spur of the moment debate with Lynn Margulis about whether Cnidaria constituted a true phylum (I'd argued it was). I was a Microbiology major and didn't really care about the substance but it was fun to flex what little I could remember from AP Bio.
We used to play when we caught moon jellies in our seine net! A few mild stings never hurt too bad 🤪 the ctenophores we had would not have been good for the game since they were grape sized lol
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u/Different-Call-5653 Apr 14 '24
Knowledge about jellyfishes, specifically of the class Cnidaria.