#cnidocytes

[donuts4evry1]

@slightlyplant

There’s a reason why I’m uncharacteristically freaked out/disgusted by comb jellies and it’s because of this video

[animalshowdown]

Phylum Round 3

Annelida: Segmented Worms. This group includes earthworms, leeches, and many classes under the umbrella of “polychaete”. This diverse phylum encompasses deposit feeders (eating dirt), detritivores, scavengers, deadly ambush predators, filter feeders, parasites, herbivores, and more. They are broadly defined by their repeating body segments and parapodia, which are nubby appendages used for both movement and breathing. Some have curved jaws for catching prey or scraping detritus off of rocks, while others have wide, elaborate, brightly colored feather-like fans for filter feeding. While able to crawl freely, a majority of marine Annelids spend most of their time in self-built tubes or burrows. Among their many important functions, they play a key role in mixing soil/sediment, breaking down decaying organic matter, and providing a key food source to countless other animals.

Cnidaria: Jellyfish, anemones, corals, box jellies, and hydroids. They have a gelatinous body with radial symmetry, a decentralized nervous system, and tentacles surrounding a simple mouth. The defining feature of this phylum are their cnidocytes, or stinging cells. There are two different body plans of the Cnidaria; an immobile “polyp” attached to a surface, or a free-living “medusa” which can swim or drift in the water column. Many polyp Cnidarians, such as corals, live in colonies. Some corals build reefs which serve as habitat for other animals. Free-living medusa Cnidarians must return to the seafloor in a polyp-like stage as a part of their life cycle.

[clingynepenthes]

With the latest episode of Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon, I'd like to bring attention to another clever bit of worldbuilding.

We already know from the previous episode that the "tentacles" are animals, not plants, and in fact are explicitly cnidarians, as shown by their nematocysts/cnidocytes, or stinging cells.

In the real world, there are a number of small creatures that can live safely among the stinging tentacles of an anemone or jellyfish, and of these, the clownfish (also known as anemonefish) are the most well-known.

It is believed that the slimy coat of clownfish differs in some way from that of other fish so that it doesn't trigger the stinging cells, so as long as the clownfish's slime coat is intact, it is protected from stings.

Of course, clownfish are marine fish, so Ryoko Kui utilized a different slimy creature, an arboreal one that could clamber about in the stinging tentacles: giant tree frogs!

They're tree frogs because their toes have the sticky discs. I've never seen frog monsters utilized this way or in this ecological niche before, but in hindsight it is brilliant in its simplicity, and very appropriate.

And as an added reference, the frogs themselves are colored exactly like clownfish!

[montereybayaquarium]

🌊💙An ode to the ocean’s collective clusters 💙🌊

In the animal kingdom, there's something unique, A special way to describe when animals meet, It's the world of collective nouns, that are quirky and fun, Describing groups of animals with more than one.

♨️A smack of jellies. Related to the potentially painful smack  of a jelly’s sting. Jellies belonging to the phylum cnidaria have stinging cells called cnidocytes. These stinging cells eject a hollow, harpoon-like structure that penetrates the flesh of unsuspecting prey and releases a venom that can cause an uncomfortable, burning sensation. 

🐧A tuxedo of penguins. Penguins have black and white coloration—like a tuxedo. This countershading is used to camouflage them from predators viewing them from above and below—think looking up at the sunlit surface and not being able to see the penguin’s white belly or looking down toward the seafloor and trying to make out the penguin’s black back.

🎪 A circus of puffins. The Atlantic puffins have bright orange feet and red tips on their beaks.  This gives them the comical appearance of a clown—with bright shoes and a red nose. This term was adopted for the entire circus of clown birds!  

🥑Then there's the collective noun we made up for a guac of molas—no explanation necessary. 

Tell us your favorite collective noun!

[dougdimmadodo]

Lion's Mane Jellyfish (Cyanea capillata)

Family: Cyaneid Jellyfish Family (Cyaneidae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Unassessed

Named for its frilly "mane" made up of over 1,200 long, stinging tentacles, the Lion's Mane Jellyfish is among the largest known jellyfish species; while this viral image showing a diver next to a Lion's Mane Jellyfish has been edited to make the jellyfish appear far larger than it actually is, members of this species still dwarf most of their relatives, with a bell ("main body") diameter of over 2.4 meters (7.89 feet) and a tentacle length of as much as 30 meters (98.4 feet), making it one the longest animals on earth. Typically found near the surface in the Arctic, northern Atlantic and northern Pacific Ocean regions, Lion's Mane Jellyfishes, like all jellyfishes, lack brains, eyes, hearts or respiratory organs (instead exchanging gasses directly between the water around them and their extremely thin tissues,) and rely heavily on waves and ocean tides to travel, but are able to slowly propel themselves in a given direction by expanding the 8 bag-like lobes of their bodies to take in water and then forcing it out again to push themselves along (although they can also to some extent detect and react to their orientation and surroundings owing to a series of frilly sensory structures located around their body's rim, know as rhopalia.) Like most jellyfishes the long, trailing tentacles of a Lion's Mane Jellyfish are lined with touch-sensitive, harpoon-like cells called cnidocytes that fire venomous barbs into any animal that touches them, and after a tentacle has stung and ensnared suitable prey (mainly fish, large plankton and smaller jellyfishes) it is pulled back towards the body where the prey is passed through a mouth-like opening on the jellyfish's underside and into a simple body cavity where it is digested, with any indigestible matter, such as shells or bones, later being ejected from the body through the same opening it entered through. The life cycle of the Lion's Mane Jellyfish, like that of most jellyfishes, takes place in 4 distinct stages and seems highly elaborate compared to that of most animals; the bag-like adults that we typically think of as jellyfishes, known as medusas, are either male or female and reproduce sexually by releasing gametes into the water around them, and should these gametes meet they fuse and develop into tiny larvae. The larvae then settle onto a solid surface and develop into polyps (a second, immobile life stage resembling a sea anemone,) and each polyp then asexually reproduces several times, with genetically identical, slow-swimming young splitting off of its body as buds. Each of these asexually-produced individuals will then develop into a medusa, continuing the cycle and meaning that each single instance of sexual reproduction in Lion's Mane Jellyfishes produces multiple asexually-produced offspring. Despite their massive size medusas of this species only live for around a year, although their polyps, which only reproduce under ideal environmental conditions, may remain dormant for longer than this.

---------------------------------------------

Image Source: here

[aeriona]

I literally hit 300 followers while writing this so here you go: Here is a study I've done on the various sapient species of Splatoon! Drawing them all in their entirety would take too much time, so I've stuck to just some hands. besides, it looks cool.

Quick note: Keep in mind that the art i’ve done for each group is a generalisation, there is an ABSURD amount of variation between different species so if you want to use this knowledge for your own stuff then literally go nuts! There are basically no rules!

Anyway, This is a very long and nerdy post, so strap in.

First we have the Cephalopods. This includes Inklings, Octolings and Nautili. (I made seperate sciencey-art posts for each a while ago). These guys are cold-blooded, have no bones, blue blood and suckers on the end of each finger (except nautili, cause they’re weird.) These suckers are quite strong especially in Octolings, which can use them to cling to walls and even ceilings. Squid also have sucker-teeth, these retractable, chitinous rings inside each sucker that vary in length and sharpness between species.

Inkfish (excluding nautili) have 3 main types of skin cells;

Chromatophores, which allows for colour-changing

Iridophores/Leucophores, which gives the skin an iridescent effect

Photophores (some squid only) which can produce a blue glow.

Instead of bones, they have a unique system of muscles called a hydrostatic skeleton, which uses fluid pressure (in this case, ink) as a support structure. Blood is used too, but mostly ink cause they have so much of it (once again except Nautili, as they have no ink at all). This means that these guys are super bendy, they can stretch and contract their limbs and even turn their heads nearly 270 degrees!

Next we have both Cnidarians and Echinoderms. (I've excluded crustaceans cause idk how to draw them lmao sorry). These groups include jellyfish, anemones, sea slugs, snails and urchins.

Similarly to cephalopods, they’re all also cold-blooded and lack bones, instead having similar hydrostatic system for support with varying strength between each class. For example, Anenomes have super robust supports in their legs thanks to calcified rods in the fluid cavity, however jellyfish are extremely floppy as they have extremely weak hydrostatic muscles.

On a side note, Jellyfish and Anenome are also unique, as many species have cnidocytes in their various arms and tentacles. These are cells that when stressed, will inject a venom that varies in strength from a bee-sting to literally killing you.

Urchins are similar, as each finger is tipped with a brittle spine that can not only inject a weak venom but also break off into your skin, leaving behind nasty shards that cut you up from the inside. Fun.

And then there’s Sea Slugs/Snails which are literally the sweetest little people alive, they have no natural weapons at all apart from their poisonous flesh. They don’t even have teeth at all! They’re just slimy little buddies who love you! However, urchins are immune to their poison as they eat them. Sea Slugs are actually an urchin’s ONLY source of food (they get sick/weak eating anything else), and this has resulted in quite a lot of legal and criminal issues. It’s whole other can of worms.

And finally, fish. Fish are actually the ONLY people in the entire Mollusc Era to have proper bones and red blood, literally everyone else has either an exoskeleton or a hydrostatic system, with either blue blood or none at all. Damn fish and their weird joints.

Cartilaginous fish (sharks, manta rays) have cool, rough skin that’s kinda unpleasant to touch, whereas the most of the remaining species fall under the ray-finned fish (basically everything else) category, and they are covered in shiny scales.

Also eel, there is no hand. Because eel. I’m very funny.

And with that, I have concluded. I’ve done a lot of research on this stuff so if you have any questions at all or if you want me to draw some more diagrams/related artwork, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an ask! I love talking about/drawing this stuff so it’s of no inconvenience!

[hana-no-seiiki]

OMFG we leARNT ABOUT THIS LAST SEM

ahem

Phylum Cnidaria are basically jellyfish and sea anemones

They have two body forms; polyp (stationary ones) and medusa (moving ones). Since the tentacles are attached to the roof they could be called Dungeon Anemones.

What makes Cnidarians unique is like what Laios says, “Cnidocytes” which are stinging cells that contain Nematocysts (that are organelles /mini organs) which are explained in a surface level in the second pic.

Here’s a more detailed diagram from Lumenlearning

Dungeon Meshi is such a great anime for bio/character design/food/monster nerds like me im screeching!!!

(also Laios is so autistic coded I love him so much)

@not-a-bot-just-shy

[captain-kuppa]

Say ahoy to the cheerleader of deep seas:

Pom Pom Crab!

[Lybia Tessellata]

These crabs are known for their signature move of always carrying a small living sea anemone around, which helps them catch food and protect themselves from predators. And thas' where they get them name from!

They arr also called "Hawaiian Boxer Crabs"

They can live up to 6 years in a human-made, low competition environment.

Yes, it do shake them pom poms. If provoked or attacked by a predator, the pom-pom crab will threaten the aggressor by waving it’s anemones around, the tentacles armed with cnidocytes (stinging cells).

The Pom Pom Crab are very popular in nano tanks. But don't be keeping these wild hearties in a small cage! They belong in deep seas, not yer aquarium.

[ Fun Fact! This fellows Hawaiian name is kūmimi pua, meaning “inedible flower crab”. ]

Lybia tessellata is a small crab growing to a width of about 2.5 cm (1 in).

The females are sometimes seen with a large red egg mass on the lower part of the body. The eggs hatch and undergo several stages before settling down on the sea floor.

The chelipeds(entire claw) do not have the broad chelae (claws) typical of decapod crabs. Instead they are slim and each has a fine finger bearing eight or nine spines.

What a fit fo' the typical cheerleader gal stereotypa!

They be professional cleaners too! The sea anemone’s tentacles can be used like mops, gathering debris and food particles from the ground around the crab’s hiding place.

They be omnivores but apparently prefer animal matter to plant matter. The front claws are not used for feeding at all, and the first pair of working legs are used for feeding.

[1] | [2] | [3] || Kuppa sends big love to me human matey Fall fo' the new crab blog idea.

[ask-annamary]

If you were a jellyfish what kind would you be?

Personally I'd like to be a moon jelly

You may ask, “Mary, why do you favor these two out of the entire subphylum of Medusozoa?” and my answer is shrimple:

They amuse me. To think some animal out in the open sea could bare such a striking resemblance to a common breakfast food. Don’t you find that amazing? These things don’t even know what breakfast is, let alone food. Like many other cnidarians, these jellyfish feed upon any plankton that is caught in their tentacles. It is sustenance, yes, but it’s hardly food… unless you view the ocean as one massive broth or some other silly nonsense like that.

Do you know how jellyfish even catch their own food? One would imagine anything to slip right off of those tentacles. No claws, no hooks, no suckers of any sorts, no. They’re like cooked noodles at a glance. The truth lies deeper (haha) once you look in a microscope. Members of the phylum Cnidaria such as sea anemones, jellyfish, and coral (yes, those are animals!) are animals characterized by the presence of cnidocytes. They are specialized cells that shoot out microscopic barns into whatever brushes up against the animal. That is why you may feel a stinging sensation, some more potent than others. Luckily for us many cnidarians evolved to consume much smaller creatures and not us. If you were to touch a sea anemone right now it would feel less like pins and needles in your flesh and much more like a shrimple handshake. And tape. It would feel like tape. Those are all the tiny barbs shooting into your skin. This is speaking form experience.

I’m busy nowadays, often distracted by other work. For once I had some free time to sketch out this answer for you. I am no artist, though. If you’re looking for one of those, perhaps a Con Artist in the same department as I may be of interest.

[pleistocene-pride]

The lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata), also known as the giant jellyfish, arctic red jellyfish, or the hair jelly is a species of large jellyfish which inhabits the cold, boreal waters of the Arctic, northern Atlantic, and northern Pacific Oceans and is especially common in the English Channel, Irish Sea, North Sea, and in western Scandinavian waters. Lion's mane jellyfish remain mostly very near the surface, at no more than 66ft in depth (20m) depth. Their slow pulsations weakly drive them forward, so they depend on ocean currents to travel great distances. The jellyfish are most often spotted during the late summer and autumn, when they have grown to a large size and the currents begin to sweep them to shore. Unlike most pelagic jellyfish, they are completely solitary and rarely travel in groups. The lion's mane jellyfish uses its stinging tentacles to capture, pull in, and eat prey such as fish, zooplankton, sea creatures, and smaller jellyfish. Lion’s mane jellyfish are themselves eaten by sea birds, sunfish, other jellyfish species, and sea turtles particularly the leatherback sea turtle. Lion's mane jellyfish are named for their showy, trailing tentacles reminiscent of a lion's mane. They can vary greatly in size from a bell diameter of 20 inches (50cms) to upwards of 6.5ft (2m), with tentacles reaching up to 120ft (36.6m) in length making them amongst the longest animals on earth. They vary in coloration from orange, to tan, to red. While most jellyfish such as the moon jelly have a circular bell, the bell of the Lion's Mane is divided into eight lobes, resembling an eight-pointed star. Each lobe contains about 70 to 150 tentacles, arranged in four fairly distinct rows. Along the bell margin is a balance organ at each of the eight indentations between the lobes – the rhopalium – which helps the jellyfish orient itself. From the central mouth extend broad frilly oral arms with many stinging cells called Cnidocytes. Closer to its mouth, its total number of tentacles is around 1,200. Like other jellyfish, lion's manes are capable of both sexual reproduction in the medusa stage and asexual reproduction in the polyp stage. Lion's mane jellyfish have four different stages in their year-long lifespan: a larval stage, a polyp stage, an ephyrae stage, and the medusa stage.

[iguanodont]

A sea monster lies dead on the beach, nearly as alien to the Wis’Sachoi observer as the humans that crossed the stars meet them. Its pinkish tentacles are loaded with painful stinging cells akin to earth’s jellyfish, so birgs regard them with extreme caution.

Note: Xenobiologist Ollie has bravely determined that the venom carried in this animal’s cnidocytes is harmless to human touch. The sensation is best described as “slightly sticky, like the tentacles of a sea anemone”.

[sanctus-ingenium]

I'm obsessed with the world of Mez- do you have any more lore about it? I'd love to hear about stuff like other mechs, if they (the people who make the tech) have flying tech, etc etc etc-

FLYING: honestly flying technology would be completely beyond the abilities of these people, but they can fly using other means. there are small dragon-like creatures called hive serpents which form hives upon the larger dragons (which the church hunt). the serpents actually eat a chiton-like exoparasite which lives on the outer skin of the dragons, and can defend their chosen host dragons very fiercely

however they can be tamed and used as flying mounts by humans, if they're taken from the wild young enough. drones can fly with one human and very light cargo, and queens (2x the size of a drone) can seat two people and heavier cargo. to distinguish them from wild serpents their wings are painted with unique identifying designs. they are usually used to carry post outside the mezian empire. within mez, the Church bans the use of hive serpents because anything associated with dragons is sinful.

while fighting dragons, it's not uncommon for holy beasts to become swarmed by hive serpents which live on the dragon - this is a major cause of death for anyone not wearing armour or not sheltering indoors at the site of the battle. the dragons' cnidocytes (the stinging cells on their tendrils - they shoot a metre-long venomous barb in response to touch) often end up killing hive serpents during the battle, as well, so there's an additional danger of envenomed bodies raining down from the sky. most dragon battles are pretty apocalyptic affairs

OTHER MECHS: there's a bunch! in fact at the height of the church's power it owned almost 10 of them. that has declined in recent years due to hull losses and bubonic plague taking out large chunks of the workforce, leaving certain beasts to fall into disrepair without maintenance. i haven't illustrated Unicorn, Lycaon, and Taurus yet (have drawn: Krokodilos, Pantera, Leun, Gryfon, and Nosewyse). the massive expense and difficulty involved in getting dragonsblood fuel means that it's really rare for private citizens to own any sort of engine, let alone a holy beast

there's obviously a lot of competition between the crews on each beast and until Leun's debut, Lycaon the wolf was considered the most superior and has the senior-most crew (somewhat bitter/jealous that they got superceded but who are they to question the throne of god)

[animalshowdown]

Phylum Round 1

Cnidaria: Jellyfish, anemones, corals, box jellies, and hydroids. They have a gelatinous body with radial symmetry, a decentralized nervous system, and tentacles surrounding a simple mouth. The defining feature of this phylum are their cnidocytes, or stinging cells. There are two different body plans of the Cnidaria; an immobile "polyp" attached to a surface, or a free-living "medusa" which can swim or drift in the water column. Many polyp Cnidarians, such as corals, live in colonies. Free-living medusa Cnidarians must return to the seafloor in a polyp-like stage as a part of their life cycle.

Phoronida: Horseshoe Worms. Living in chitinous tubes, these animals resemble feather duster worms, but are a completely different phylum. These worms are defined by their large horseshoe-shaped crown of tentacles, which generate a water current to bring food to the mouth via filter feeding. Another unique trait of the Phoronids is their "ampulla", which is a bulb-like structure at the base of their tails that helps anchor them and acts as a fulcrum to quickly retract away from predators. Some species are able to bore into coral or rock using caustic chemicals in their mucus.

[emosaurus-tgirl]

Anodites

The way I conceptualize them, Anodites have ctenophore bodies with Dendrogaster execution.

They are gelatinous and amorphous with soft bodies capable of bending and contorting to most shapes and sizes. They can even extend limb-like pseudopods for better object manipulation. Their "hair" is a collection of specialized pseudopods lined with cnidocyte-like cells which produce mana. They use them like feeding tentacles.

An Anodite can hybridize with almost any species, and when they do, the Anodite DNA grows a sort of symbiont inside of the offspring's body, molded to their form. This symbiont exists essentially and functionally as the same individual as its host like an extensive mitochondrion.

[montereybayaquarium]

Ooo, awww—OUCH! The Pacific nettles are glorious golden globs, but they sure do have a stabby sting. Almost all jellies have the ability to sting as a method of paralyzing and capturing prey. 

Dangling below the jellies’ bells are thin, reddish, straight tentacles and frilly oral arms (think of them as long loopy lips). Both tentacles and oral arms are covered in stinging cells called cnidocytes — if you look closely you’ll see them as tiny bumps peppering the oral arms. These stinging cells release a hollow, harpoon-like structure that penetrates the flesh of unsuspecting prey (or the occasional, unaware human) and releases a venom that causes that uncomfortable, burning sensation.

While jellies use these stinging cells to capture prey, their mighty cnidocytes can also ward off predators—though they don’t deter leatherback turtles or ocean sunfish! Perhaps turtles and sunfish like their food spicy? 

Gazing at jellies brings us peace and joy, but remember, just like every rose, a jelly can have a sting.

#IntereSTING #PacificNettles #TurtlesAndSunfishLikeSpicyFood #FeelingTheBurnToday

[ceruleanmoonjellies]

Ctenophores are more commonly known as Comb jellies, are marine invertebrates and resemble Cnidarians with a few notable similarities. Such as, lacking true organs, being mostly water, hollow gut, carnivorous behavior, tentacles, and are both diploblastic (having a body w/ only two embryonic layers). Many differences too though, like all cnidarians have stinging cells in their tentacles called nematocysts or cnidocytes (even if their stinging power isn’t always strong) but ctenophora have tentacles lined with sticky cells (colloblasts) so that they can catch prey. They also have different body shapes, Cnidarians that we consider jellyfish are radially symmetrical but Ctenophora are biradially symmetrical.

They are argued by some to be sister groups or even closely related but honestly jellyfish are closer to sea anemone than comb jellies based on our current evidence.