‘I had offspring long before I had sex’: my week as a Lion’s mane jellyfish

Monday

I’m afraid I’m a bit of a drifter with the stream. Not any old stream, though: I travel the northern seas on the mighty ocean currents, as if I’m doing the currents a favour. I’m not wholly passive: when it’s worthwhile I can squeeze myself along with rhythmic pulses of my great bell – two metres across – that swells above an infinitude of tentacles.

Tuesday

I’m the longest creature on earth. The longest that ever was on earth. Don’t pay any heed to that claim about the Scottish bootlace worm of 1864. Fifty-five metres, forsooth! The bloody thing was stretched if you ask me: easy enough to do. But without any stretch at all, I’m 37m from the crown of my bell to the tip of my bottom-most hard-stinging tentacle. I look like a great tangle of lion’s mane: and wouldn’t any lion alive give all he had for the massive mane that I carry beneath the sea?

Wednesday

I had offspring long before I had sex. We jellyfish travel from form to form: from egg to larva, from larva to polyp. As polyps we reproduce without sex, creating a stack of immature forms called ephyrae. When one of these breaks off from the stack it goes on – if it doesn’t get eaten – to become a proper fully grown and, though I says it as shouldn’t, altogether magnificent fully adult medusa.

Thursday

That bit about brandy comes from the Sherlock Holmes story, as you probably know. Spoiler alert: the jellyfish done it. Stinging humans is of no use to me, though. Stinging fish, crustaceans, items of zooplankton: that’s more like it. I have more than 1,000 tentacles equipped with stingers, and the tentacles around my mouth not only sting but carry stung items up to my mouth. And today was a good day: the drift brought a few fishes my way, my pulses brought them closer and my tentacles brought them closer than they would have wished.

Friday

On I drift, a little below the surface, never more than about 15 metres. I’ve heard tales of swimming humans who get tangled up in one of us: rotten luck and great waste of stingers. Occasionally the swimmer panics and drowns: you can hardly blame us. Humans love their fantasies about evil creatures that come from the deep, but we’re just honest homely jellyfish trying to make a living like everyone else.

Saturday

Time to deposit those eggs. I had an encounter with a handsome drifting stranger a few days ago and that’s the result. I placed them on a surface of rock. Good luck, little eggs, little larvae, little polyps, little ephyrae. On, on to the deep north, the finest waters on the planet. What’ll I sting tomorrow?

Lifespan One year from egg

Eating habits Anything stingable

Hobbies Stinging, drifting

Sexual preferences Leonine drifters

Photograph by Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images