‘Man O War’
Physalia physalis
Film and Aquarium: Coral Morphologic
Original Soundtrack: Geologist

In this special installment of our Natural History film series, Geologist soundtracks a macroscopic view of a Portuguese man-o-war’s beautiful, yet highly venomous tentacles.

The man-o-war is often mistaken as a jellyfish, but this is not the case. It does not swim, but is instead propelled by the winds, tides and currents across the ocean’s surface. In fact, a man-o-war is not even a single organism, but an entire colony of organisms called siphonophores, that live together as a singular unit. They are found floating across all of the world’s tropical and subtropical oceans. Even more impressive is that the man-o-war colony is comprised of four different types of polyps, called zooids, that each serve a different purpose to the overall functioning of the colony.

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