When grown-up jellyfish love each other very much, they make huge numbers of teeny-tiny potato-shaped larvae. Those larvae grow into little polyps that cling to rocks and catch prey with their stinging tentacles. But their best trick is when they clone themselves by morphing into a stack of squirming jellyfish pancakes.
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There’s a reason the ocean is full of moon jellyfish: They’re masters at multiplying themselves over and over.
The bell-shaped creature that most people think of as jellyfish is really just the animal’s adult form.
It’s hard to tell by looking at them, but there are male and female moon jellies. The males release sperm into the water and the females collect it to fertilize their eggs. Those eggs turn into larvae called planulae that mom sends out into the world.
Each planula larva does its best to settle on something solid -- like rock - and develops into a polyp that looks like a tiny sea anemone.
The polyps clone themselves through budding, in which a new polyp grows out of an existing polyp’s side.
When the conditions are right, the polyps go through another round of cloning called strobilation. They develop ridges along their sides that get more and more pronounced over time.
“The polyp will start to look like a stack of pancakes,” says Michael McGill, senior biologist at Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco.
Each individual pancake, called an ephyra, is a clone that eventually works itself free from the stack and swims off to grow into an adult.
“The feeling of watching them break free and swim off -- it's really inspiring,” says McGill.
--- Do jellyfish have brains?
Jellyfish don’t have a single centralized brain. But that hasn’t stopped them from being successful. They do have a nervous system called a nerve net or nerve ring that is radially distributed throughout their bodies.
--- What do Jellyfish eat?
Most jellyfish are carnivores that eat plankton, small fish, fish eggs and whatever other small prey they can catch with their stinging tentacles.
-- How do jellyfish sting?
Jellyfish have special stinging cells called nematocysts that line their tentacles. If something touches a nematocyst, it will pop, releasing a microscopic harpoon filled with venom. Jellyfish use their nematocyst-laced tentacles to catch prey and deter predators.
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