Portuguese Man-of-war

The Man-of-war is a floating, compound marine animal found in warm regions of all oceans. It is made up of a colony of four kinds of polyps (individual, tubular water animals). One kind of polyp forms the gas-filled float, 8 to 10 inches long, which is usually iridescent blue with a pink crest. Below the float hangs the food- catching, feeding, and reproductive polyps.

Food-catching polyps form tentacles that may be more than 40 feet long, with stinging parts that paralyze or kill most fish and other prey on contact. (with the exception of the Man-of-war Fish. Then feeding polyps close around the prey and digest it. The sting is painful to humans and can cause nausea and convulsions. People should avoid stepping on the Man-of-war jellyfish that have washed ashore. Sometimes children can be found stepping on them popping its float. This is dangerous because some of its stinging tentacles could still be intact.

When jellyfish wash ashore, most of their stinging barbs on the tentacles are discharged by the breaking waves. This does not always happen. Sometimes some of those barbs are still intact and will still sting even after the jellyfish is dead.

The Portuguese Man-of-war is a coelenterate belonging to the genus Physalia of the order Siphonophora.