Chironex fleckeri

The deadly sea-wasp box jellyfish

A book I received one day from an anonymous benefactor contained a collection of true “horror stories”, namely the medical reports for the coroner of thoroughly documented human fatalities in Australia, caused by marine invertebrates. Now, while scorpions, funnel web and red back spiders are infamous enough and perhaps will feature on their own one day in this column, poisonous jellyfish, most notably the so-called sea-wasps and their fiendish deeds are far less known. Possibly the most potently venomous animals in the world are the Australian cubomedusan box jellyfish Chironex fleckeri and its smaller relative the Irukandji jellyfish Carukia barnesi. Measuring not even 1 cm across its bell and with tentacles less than a metre long, the Irukandji jellyfish may be small, but it can be a killer and its venom has been credited with a power 100 times more potent than that of a cobra.

Jellyfish Lights Cigarette

Using jellyfish as a lighter

I haven’t smoked for decades and have no intention to ever smoke again, but as a young student I was silly enough to think it was “cool” to work with a cigarette between one’s teeth.

And that’s what happened in South African waters on that memorable day of May 9th, 1967, when I used a jellyfish to light my cigarette. I am confident that in the whole world I am the only person who has ever used a jellyfish to make fire (and it had nothing at all to do with the fact that jellyfish can give you a nasty ‘burn’ when their tentacles brush against you).

Individualism – is there anything greater than that?

Cells that come together

When we talk about individuals and individualism, we are usually pretty clear in our minds what we mean. There are, however, animals in which the term ‘individual’ is far from clear; in fact it can be outright ambiguous to refer to an individual. Take corals, for instance.