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a-daks:

weatheredlaw:

weatheredlaw:

i taught swim lessons and preschool, do y’all wanna hear the most ridiculous white kid names i’ve ever seen?

i’ve met at least a dozen children named some form of “jackson” but the best ones were “jaxon” and “jakson”

a parent who i really liked named her son “jaycob” because she was worried people wouldn’t pronounce it correctly. when someone accidentally spelled it “jacob” she would loudly and obnoxiously ask “WHO’S JAH-KOBE?”

two siblings named “thor” and “tiara”

i once had a classroom with four girls named “brooklyn”

if you sent me a list of popular boy names, i could guarantee i’ve met every single one of them

twin girls named paisley and brinley

a girl named reader

a boy named rocko

keighleey

kayde

kolten

if it can start with a “k” instead of a “c” i have met that child

brittalynn

i taught a swim class with three girls named “london” but only one of them was spelled “lundon” and i know my boss did that to me on purpose

a couple named all their kids after places in arizona: tatum, payson, and hayden

and speaking of hayden, i’ve seen: haydon, heighden, and heydon

according to some white people, there are sixteen different ways to spell mckenzie

lakelyn, blakelynn

this is white culture

bunjywunjy:

thebiggitydickitywickity:

deebott:

bunjywunjy:

guess what, it’s time for another episode of Weird Biology! today we’re going to learn about a creature that looks like a stained-glass window, but stalks the oceans with toxic might powered only by the wind like a sailing ship of old.

that’s right, it’s the devil’s own shopping bag-

the name is almost longer than the animal.

The Portuguese Man o’ War is a floating jellyfish relative called a Hydrozoan. it was named after the 18th century sailing ship, apparently by a blind person. “oh, it looks like a sailing ship under full sail” no it doesn’t, shut up. it looks like a rogue walmart shopping bag that blew into the Atlantic and makes a living by strangling innocent sea turtles.

but like the aforementioned plastic bag, the Man o’ War uses its lovely blue-purple air sac to catch the breeze. it wanders in groups through the warm waters of the Atlantic, driven along by the wind and tides. kind of poetic, really.

as long as you don’t look underwater, anyway.

I’m about to ruin it for everybody, hang on.

like so many other things in life, it’s not what you see on the surface that’s important but what is underneath that counts.

in this case, what’s underneath is up to 165 feet of venomous tentacles. it’s like that thing they say about icebergs, where you only see the top 10% and the rest is an invisible ship-killing nightmare? it’s exactly like that.

except with poison tentacles.

the Man o’ War is basically a biological fishing trawler, trailing these stupidly long tentacles like a fine mesh net through the water. and when an innocent fish who probably has a family at home comes into contact with this “net”, specialized cells called Nematocysts are triggered to fire tiny poison harpoons into the victim, causing instant death or paralysis.

the tentacle then reels itself upward into the body of the Man o’ War like a fishing line, dragging its helpless victim upward to be digested.

so, uh, actually not like a fishing trawler then, not like a fishing trawler at all.

unless the fishing trawler was designed by Junji Ito.

though the Man o’ War may look like a jellyfish, it’s definitely not. in fact, it’s not even a single animal! it’s actually four separate organisms jammed into a venomous trenchcoat like three best friends trying to sneak into an R rated movie.

“how the fuck even”, I hear you say. and that’s a valid question! it’s not everyday that we discover that what we thought was a single animal is actually four smaller animals living communally to form a larger, more dangerous animal. it would be like discovering that opossums are actually comprised of 17 rats each.

no word on if they do a silly dance and tap their fingers together to fuse or what though.

in the Man o’ War’s case, these four individual kinds of “polyps” that comprise the complete final form are the air sac polyp (gets the gang around), the digestive polyp (converts murdered fish into energy for the whole gang), the reproductive polyp (makes small clones of each individual gang member), and the tentacle polyp (murders things indiscriminately for the sheer joy of it).

that’s right, the tentacles are a separate animal! you might be wondering if they sometimes come loose, wander off, and just sting people/animals randomly when they drift into populated areas. what a silly question!

yeah, happens all the time.

SHIT.

while rarely fatal, Man o’ Wars stings can seriously injure humans. this is a big problem in areas where Man o’ Wars are common, because storms and predators can knock the tentacles right the fuck off. the tentacles drift away, only to wash ashore and sting a hapless beachgoer weeks later. that’s right, rogue tentacles can still sting for days or weeks after separation! even if the Man ‘o War is beached! isn’t that neat! fuck!

the discovery of a beached Man o’ War usually closes the entire fucking beach, for this reason. would YOU want to go fuck around in the sand if it might be full of over a hundred feet of poison spaghetti too fine to notice with the naked eye?

if the answer is yes, I have great news about a bridge I’d like to sell you.

if all this information upset you, I’d like to offer my deepest condolences. but buckle up for one last upsetting fact, and here it is: Man o’ War are spreading.

usually restricted to warm waters, climate change has driven the Man o’ War as far north as Great Britain. that’s awful awful awful news for any country that touches the Atlantic ocean, which is lots of them.

luckily, we have dependable allies in this fight: sea turtles and the Mola Mola! (which I’ve written about before) unfortunately just about all we can do at this point is to cheer these awesome devil-balloon-munchers on from the safety of shore, while trying to invent a Man o’ War-proof barrier net.

for now, watch out for anything that looks like a floating plastic bag.

and for god’s sake, watch where you step.

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thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series here.

if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee or check out my Patreon to see extra content and support Weird Biology.

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IMAGE SOURCES

img1- National Geographic img2- The Garden of Eadon img3- Sean Nash img4- Enrico Villa img5- livescience.com img6-

diply.com

img7- Daily Mail img8- Sun Sentinel

These lil hoes are in Galveston too

this is so dramatic. they’re called blue bottles and yeah they sting pretty bad and can cause severe stomach pain and the venom gets into your lymphs and that sucks but it goes away in 30 minutes. they’re not gonna close a beach over it lol

hey guys! I’ve been seeing a lot of responses like this on my post, and I just wanted to clear up a few misconceptions that I didn’t cover in my post, whoops

THE ATLANTIC MAN O’ WAR AND THE AUSTRALIAN BLUEBOTTLE ARE NOT THE SAME SPECIES.

while Man o’ War is a term that can be applied to both, the Indo-Pacific Man o’ War (Physalia utriculus), or Bluebottle, is a smaller subspecies of the Atlantic Man o’ War (Physalia physalis).

and while Bluebottles cause most of the recorded injuries from Man o’ War stings of all types, they are less venomous and less dangerous than their Atlantic cousins, with zero recorded deaths. sadly, we cannot say the same of the Atlantic Man o’ War, which is less common but far more dangerous. The north and eastern spread of the Atlantic Man o’ War is indeed a cause for alarm. so like, don’t panic, but watch out!

I apologize for not clearing that up in the article! I didn’t realize that the Bluebottle was so common in the Pacific.