Incredible little creatures: the transparencies of Pelagie

SUMMER SERIES - (13/17) Very strange animals, jellyfish appeared on Earth around 650 million years ago. They still populate our seas.

Jellyfish remain the most authentic relics of our coasts, especially since their appearance has barely changed in a thousand million years. Surprising for beings lacking everything that is usually the prerogative of the animal world: a skeleton, a brain, a respiratory and circulatory system...

Our Pelagia noctiluca is a strange "thing." A large umbrella topped with a polyp; a stinger that discharges a stinging venom into its victim after a small electric shock. Even if it's dead! Not enough to cook jellyfish soups, as Aristotle so adored, or make dried fish, like the Japanese, who consume 12 tons of it a year.

The jellyfish expels its young like its excrement, through its mouth. The future mother collects her virtual lover's sperm from the water and takes care of reproduction on its own through... its stomach. Which, after all, serves to feed on crustaceans, small fish, and even other jellyfish...