Physalia physalis
| Portuguese Man O' War | |
|---|---|
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Cnidaria |
| Class: | Hydrozoa |
| Order: | Siphonophora |
| Family: | Physaliidae |
| Genus: | Physalia |
| Species: | P. physalis |
| Binomial name | |
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Physalia physalis (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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The Atlantic Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis), also known as the man-of-war,blue bottle, or floating terror, is a marine hydrozoan of the family Physaliidae found in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its venomous tentacles can deliver a painful (and sometimes fatal) sting. Despite its outward appearance, the Portuguese man o' war is not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, which, unlike jellyfish, is not actually a single multicellular organism, but a colonial organism made up of specialized individual animals (of the same species) called zooids or polyps. These polyps are attached to one another and physiologically integrated to the extent that they are unable to survive independently, and therefore have to work together and function like a so-called individual animal.
The Indo-Pacific Portuguese man-of-war (P. utriculus), or blue bottle, is a related species with very similar appearance found throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The name "man o' war" comes from the man-of-war, an 18th-century armed sailing ship, and the cnidarian's supposed resemblance to the Portuguese version at full sail. In other languages, it is known as the 'Portuguese war-ship' (Dutch: Portugees oorlogsschip, Norwegian: portugisisk krigsskip, Finnish: portugalinsotalaiva, Chinese: 葡萄牙戰艦; pinyin: Pútáoyá zhànjiàn), the 'Portuguese galley' (German: portugiesische Galeere, Hungarian: portugál gálya), the 'Portuguese caravel' (Portuguese: caravela portuguesa, Spanish: carabela portuguesa, Italian: caravella portoghese), (French: caravelle portugaise, the 'Portuguese little boat' (Russian: португальский кораблик), the 'monk's hat jellyfish' (Chinese: 僧帽水母; pinyin: sēngmào shuǐmǔ), or the 'skipjack's eboshi-hat' (katsuo no eboshi (Japanese: 鰹の烏帽子)).
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Wikipedia