![]() This comes at the cost of their immune systems, resulting in older jellies being more susceptible to infections. Because those conditions might be unusual or short-lived, the jelly needs to grow from polyp to medusa as fast as possible to take advantage of them.Īs they age, jellies put increasingly more resources into producing eggs or sperm. Some jellies, like South Africa's pink meanie, rely on very specific conditions (in the case of the pink meanie, it needs other types of jellies to bloom in large numbers).Deep-sea dwelling jellies are fewer and far between, so their incentive for growing large quickly is to deter predators to that they can survive long enough to reproduce.To be reproductively successful, a jelly needs to produce more sperm or eggs than its rivals - and that means being a bigger jelly. Jellies, like moon jellies or compass jellies, gather in huge numbers to spawn.However, this is only a very small part of the animal's life. © Two Oceans AquariumĪlthough the initial adult is small, it is already a mature animal and capable of reproducing - but there are a lot of incentives to grow as large as possible as quickly as possible, for example: The adult, medusa stage of the jelly's life is what most people would recognise as a "jellyfish". You can see jellyfish polyps for yourself at the Aquarium's recently upgraded Microscope Exhibit. In this phase, the jelly has a fully developed digestive system and is able to catch prey and feed itself efficiently. Polyps can be thought of as small stalked animals with one end fixed to the ground, and the other end extending into the water with a ring of tentacles surrounding its mouth/anus. The attached planula develops into its next life stage - the polyp. Once a perfect spot has been found, the planula enters the next phase. In some cases, they may even attach themselves to other animals, particularly the bodies of other adult jellyfish. In most cases, the planula finds a piece of solid seabed to attach to, with different species preferring different types of terrain. This microscopic mass of cells is a planula, the larval stage of a moon jelly that is free-swimming and trying to find the perfect habitat on the seafloor.
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