Think you could handle a career jelly wrestling? You’ll get sweaty with the long hot sticky nights but here’s a tip – It doesn’t include buxom babes in skimpy bikini’s in a jelly filled blow up pool. For this type of wrestling, your pool is the warm tropical waters of North Queensland and your opponents are pulsating gelatinous jellies with deadly tentacles.
It’s a box with four corners and 24 eyes. Not the type you would want to pack a present in because the eyes on this box are found in the ocean, on the deadly box jellyfish.
Everything about box jellies are unexpected, they have gadget-like extendable arms, fish for prey, fire venomous harpoons and are mostly water yet they’re the deadliest animals on earth.
But here’s something else extraordinary about these animals that few people know…..they have a whole bunch of eyes, 24 in fact! In the Irukandji box jellyfish the eyes are found in clusters on the bottom of their box-like body, between its dangerous tentacles.
Now this is where it can get a bit tricky, so hang in there. Within each of the four clusters (one cluster for each side of the jelly) there are a total 6 eyes, made up of 3 different types of eyes. You still with us?
Imagine if your arms or fingers were like a swiss army knife and could do just about everything and anything like; attract prey, change length, shoot weapons, go fishing, digest food and excrete your waste.
Well, it just so happens that an animal like this does exist with all these awesome traits. The good news is that it would be highly unlikely to ever find yourself at the dinner table with it.
Meet the Irukandji, which is really tricky to say let alone spell. Pronounced (ira-can-gee) it’s a type of box jellyfish, named for their distinctive box-like body or ‘bell’ with a single long tentacle coming down from each corner.
Meet the world’s deadliest fisher, the Irukandji Jellyfish. This tiny jellyfish has extendable arms that are loaded with venom filled harpoons. To attract prey the Irukandji extends then quickly retracts sections of it’s long arms, like it is ‘jigging‘ for fish. When contact is made with the arms, a barrage of venom filled harpoons (nematocysts) are unleashed on the unsuspecting victim.
