When Aliens Fall In Love - Jellyfish Lifecycle

From the pulsating bell to the shimmying tentacles, jellyfish have got to be some of the weirdest lifeforms our planet has to offer. Oral arms wave mindlessly around a central mouth while stinging cells puncture and poison without a thought. Not only does the jellyfish not even have to be alive for it to sting, but the stinging tentacles needn't be attached to the rest of the body at all. The futility of such endeavours is totally lost on them, as if they're more a force of nature than an animal. The sheer depth of their apparent mindlessness is quite amazing. It's like watching someone watching TV. Or, with all these reality shows, watching someone watching someone watching TV on the TV.

But no matter how strange a jellyfish may seem as it drifts in the ocean's currents, its life history is stranger still. Jellyfish really are weird from start to finish.

I am a MAJOR!

The lovely lady at shewalkssoftly.com has given me a MAJOR AWARD! Isn't it beautiful? I remember coming across her blog when I was looking up Vampire Squid. Oddly enough, I'd already written about that charismatic cutie so I guess I was just checking out what other people had to say. Little did I know that my travels would one day result in this most illustrious of events!

The Sun is right now rising and the very air at my window appears golden.

Giant Club Sponge

Image: SERPENT Media Archive Project

Oh, wow! Who knew there was such a thing as a gay cactus? Nice to see it add a bit of light, pastel colour to all that gloom and grimnity.

Ping-pong Tree Sponge

Image: R Vrijenhoek, MBARI

So... it's a FLESH-EATING Sponge that looks like a tree that looks like it's covered in ping-pong balls? O. K. Yet again we find that the deep sea provides a surprising legitimacy to all kinds of madness. No doubt Elvis is doing battle with the risen Hitler down there, too.

Sally Lightfoot (Grapsus grapsus)

Image: ConstantineD via Flickr

Woo! You look HOT! You're on FIRE! I think this crab knows I'm looking! And she knows that I know that she knows I'm looking. And I know that I know that she knows that I know that she knows that those rocks know that we know that... I'm confused.

Sea Pig

Image: MBARI

You know what I find really weird about the Sea Pig? The translucence, sure. The tentacles, of course. The legs, most definitely. But the really weird thing is that it's a Sea Cucumber who has just enough extra body parts to look like some other, completely different animal who has lost a whole load of body parts.