Lion's mane jellyfish
| Lion's mane jellyfish | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Cnidaria |
| Class: | Scyphozoa |
| Order: | Semaeostomeae |
| Family: | Cyaneidae |
| Genus: | Cyanea |
| Species: | C. capillata |
| Binomial name | |
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Cyanea capillata (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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The lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata), also known as the giant jellyfish or the hair jelly, is the largest known species of jellyfish. Its range is confined to cold, boreal waters of the Arctic, northern Atlantic, and northern Pacific Oceans. It is common in the English Channel, Irish Sea, North Sea and in western Scandinavian waters south to Kattegat and Øresund. It may also drift in to the south-western part of the Baltic Sea (where it cannot breed due to the low salinity). Similar jellyfish, which may be the same species, are known to inhabit seas near Australia and New Zealand. The largest recorded specimen found, washed up on the shore of Massachusetts Bay in 1870, had a bell with a diameter of 2.3 metres (7 ft 6 in) and tentacles 37.0 m (121.4 ft) long. Lion's mane jellyfish have been observed below 42°N latitude for some time in the larger bays of the east coast of the United States.
The lion's mane jellyfish uses its stinging tentacles to capture, pull in and eat prey such as fish, sea creatures and smaller jellyfish.
The taxonomy of the Cyanea species is not fully agreed upon; some zoologists have suggested that all species within the genus should be treated as one. Two distinct taxa, however, occur together in at least the eastern North Atlantic, with the blue jellyfish (Cyanea lamarckii Péron & Lesueur, 1810) differing in blue (not red) color and smaller size (10–20 cm diameter, rarely 35 cm). Populations in the western Pacific around Japan are sometimes distinguished as Cyanea nozakii Kisinouye, 1891, or as a race, Cyanea capillata nozakii.
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