animal essay thing for funsies!! (unfinished)

akavenus 2/16/2023 11:36 am 317

While most insane animals are extinct or prehistoric, Earth still has amazing and dangerous animals. I know when you think of dangerous animals you think of snakes, bugs, arachnids, cows, and sharks, but there are many more threatening animals!

Jellyfish. Jellyfish are obviously dangerous, they have literally existed before dinosaurs, and in twenty five seconds three people are stung by jellyfish. But, I would like to focus on one specific jellyfish, the Phantom jellyfish. The Phantom jellyfish is unlike any other jelly. Instead of stinging tentacles, they have four arm-like tentacles that reach out to grab prey. Thought that jellyfish couldn't get worse? Well, the Phantom jelly grows to 30 feet long! These jellies are only spotted about once every year, The Monterey Bay Research Institute has only spotted twenty seven in the past twenty seven years! Not only that, but in the past one hundred ten years only one hundred eighteen have been sighted. The genus of these wondrous creatures is Stygiomedusa and their species is S.gigantea! The class of these jellies is Scyphozoa which is the exclusively marine class phylum Cnidaria referring to “true jellyfish”. Phantom jellyfish have an umbrella-shaped bell that can grow to a meter long, the pliant tissue of the jelly allows it to stretch four to five times its size as well! The arm-like tentacles of the jelly are described as having a “kite-like” or “paddle-like” shape that can grow up to 10 meters long, which grows into a V like shape with a wide base and tapering near the ends! Don't worry though, the diet of the Phantom jellyfish consists of plankton and small fish. The Phantom jellyfish is known to be one of the largest invertebrate deep sea predators. It is said that Phantom jellies travel in swarms because gelatinous mucus from the medusa has been found covering hydrothermal vents. No matter what this animal eats or the length of it, it's still an amazing and dangerous animal even if it is a sea creature that is only spotted once every year, that means there is still a lot to learn about them and jellies in general!

Hopefully you're not done learning about jellyfish, amazing creatures that don't have brains, hearts, or blood. These animals are truly wondrous. As proof, the Lion's mane jellyfish. Similar to the phantom jellyfish, the Lion's mane jelly is incredibly long, the tentacles alone can grow up to one hundred twenty feet! The diameter of the bell can grow to seven feet! The jelly is the largest species of jellyfish known to man! As the name suggests the jelly looks similar to a lion's mane, the tentacles are long and thin, they clump together which cause the tentacles to look like a lion's mane, another name for the jellyfish is the Hair Jelly! The bell of the jelly isn't round but actually divided into eight lobes to create an eight pointed star each lobe containing seventy to one hundred fifty tentacles. Though the lion's mane jelly is the largest species of jelly, those found in lower latitudes are smaller, the diameter of the bell is fifty centimeters, about twenty inches. However, the size doesn't change the damage a Lion's mane jelly can cause, the tentacles of the jelly are described as extremely sticky and having stinging cells! The Lion’s mane jelly that was recorded to be the longest, one hundred twenty feet, is actually suggested to belong to a completely different type Cyanea! This unusual length is longer than a blue whale making it one of the longest known animals in the world!

Although bugs aren’t always dangerous to humans they are incredibly fascinating. For instance, the “Orchid Mantis”. The orchid mantis, also known as the Hymenopus coronatus, is a mantis that resides in Southeast Asia and can be kept as pets! However they aren’t a “beginner-friendly” pet, even though there is no such thing, they need to be kept in a very specific temperature range of 30 to 55 degrees celsius and high humidity to create the optimal environment for them. There are other mantises that look like plants, not just the orchid mantis! For example, the dead leaf mantis and the ghost mantis. These mantises are colored and shaped to look like dead leaves, every part on the mantis's body has extra ruffles to camouflage with leaves better and have various shades of brown coloring their bodies. The mantis’s hunting abilities are quite interesting! First off, female orchid mantises are larger than male mantises. Secondly, the mantis has toothed front legs in order to grab prey with blinding speed. The orchid mantis’s main prey are butterflies and they use ambush predation to catch these large prey. Much of the dramatic increase in size for female mantises is attributed to their hunting technique!