What Are Jellyfish?

Jellyfish

Jellyfish are unusual sea animals that have jellylike bodies and stinging tentacles, with which they capture their food.  The jellyfish is among the strangest of sea creatures.

It is not even a fish, but a very simple kind of sea animal that has no skeleton.  The main pair of the jellyfish’s body looks like an umbrella, and it is made up of two thin layers of tissue with jellylike materials between them.

Around the rim of the umbrella are usually a number of simple eyes, and in the center of the body underneath is the mouth.

Hanging down from the edge are string like tentacles, armed with batteries of stinging cells filled with paralyzing poison.  If a small bumps into the jellyfish’s tentacles, it gets stung and captured for food.  If you touch these tentacles, you may get stung, too!

A jellyfish swims by folding and unfolding its body—much like closing an umbrella.  Mostly, it floats along with the current.  Some jellyfish are no larger than a pea.  Other may be two feet or more in diameter.–Dick Rogers