Cnidarian
20 cnidarian organisms and their business parallels
Box Jellyfish
The box jellyfish is the immortal jellyfish's opposite: rather than achieving longevity through lifecycle reversal, it invests in being the most venom...
Brain Coral
Brain coral colonies are clonal organisms comparable to aspen groves - thousands of genetically identical polyps building a shared calcium carbonate s...
Budding Hydra
Hydras reproduce primarily through budding—a small copy of the parent grows directly from the body wall, then detaches as an independent organism. The...
Colonial Hydroid
Obelia is a colonial hydroid—essentially a branching colony of hydra-like polyps connected by living tissue. Each polyp can regenerate, and the colony...
Coral
Corals are the venture capitalists of marine ecosystems. They invest calcium carbonate - biological capital - into physical structures that generate r...
Coral
Reef-building corals are the ultimate ecosystem engineers: their accumulated skeletons create the physical structure of entire ecosystems. Coral reefs...
Coral Polyps
Coral polyps are tiny animals that secrete calcium carbonate skeletons. Over time, these skeletons accumulate into coral reefs - the most diverse mari...
Coral-Zooxanthellae System
Coral reefs are built on mutualism. The coral animal provides shelter and CO2; symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) living in coral tissues provide up to 9...
Fire Coral
Fire corals aren't true corals - they're hydrozoans more closely related to jellyfish. But they build calcium carbonate structures indistinguishable f...
Freshwater Polyp
Hydra oligactis is a close relative of the 'immortal' Hydra vulgaris, but with a crucial difference: it ages. While H. vulgaris shows no senescence an...
Green Hydra
Green hydra carry photosynthetic algae (Chlorella) within their cells, creating a self-feeding system. The hydra provides protection and nutrients; th...
Hydra
## Biological Immortality as Default Setting Hydra are the freshwater cnidarians that broke the aging equation. This genus of tiny (1-20mm) polyps de...
Jellyfish
The jellyfish has no brain, no heart, no blood, no bones—and has been outcompeting everything else in the ocean for 500 million years. While fish evol...
Moon Jellyfish
Moon jellyfish have a complex lifecycle alternating between polyp and medusa (jellyfish) stages. The swimming medusa is the visible form, but the poly...
Portuguese Man o' War
The Portuguese man o' war appears to be a single jellyfish but is actually a colony of four types of specialized organisms (zooids) that cannot surviv...
Sea Anemone
## The Sessile Strategist Sea anemones of the order *Actiniaria* represent one of evolution's most successful experiments in positional strategy. Wit...
Sea Anemone
Sea anemones provide clownfish protection from predators through their defensive arsenal of stinging tentacles - few species dare approach. In return,...
Sea Fan
Sea fans are gorgonian corals that build flexible, fan-shaped colonies rather than rigid limestone structures. They orient perpendicular to currents,...
Siphonophore
Giant siphonophores can reach 150 feet - potentially the longest animals on Earth - yet like man o' war they're colonial organisms. Thousands of speci...
Staghorn Coral
Staghorn coral grows up to 8 inches per year - extraordinarily fast for a reef-building coral. Its branching structure creates three-dimensional habit...