#Chirodectes Maculatus

[raveneuse]

Chirodectes Maculatus, a very rare, monospecific genus of box jellyfish in the family Chirodropidae.

[androgynousbirdtale]

Chirodectes Maculatus

[sandpaperdaisy]

Chirodectes Maculatus jellyfish mermaid for #DrawMerMay2023! I drew it for my dear friend Jon, a wonderful artist with an even more wonderful eye for beauty.

[tarpies]

the lonely immortal

[strawlessandbraless]

A diver off the coast of Papua New Guinea recorded this extremely rare jellyfish swimming alongside them, only to find out this is only the second ever recorded sighting of this species.

Four groups of striped tentacles trail behind the jellyfish’s translucent body, which is spotted with rings of varying size. Inside the bell is a bright red organ that is most likely the animal’s gastrovascular cavity.

It’s called Chirodectes maculatus (Latin for “spotted”), and it’s an extremely uncommon species of box jelly found off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Box jellies, distinguished for their boxy shape, are often venomous to humans—some are even potentially fatal. But C. maculatus isn’t known to be.

📷 credit: X

[vkeivampire]

A quick rant thingy :D

OKAY i LOVE JELLYFISH SO MUCH like im bouncing my leg whilst writing this and my heart PHYSICALLY goes FASTER like they r so CUTE and SILLY and JELLY-LIKE. I want my next life to be one where i can live happily as a jellyfish

AND I LOVE ALL SPECIES. LIKE NAME ANY ONE AND I WILL LOVE THEM.

I REALLY LOVE THE CHIRODECTES MACULATUS SPECIES OF JELLYFISH. (Did u know that chirodectes maculatus means spotted in latin because the jellyfishes main body is dressed in spotts)

THE CHIRODECTES MACULATUS JELLYFISHES HAVE ONLY HAD 2 RECORDED SIGHTINGS MAKING THEM THE RAREST KNOWN JELLYFISH (a gif of the chirodectes maculatus is underneath :3)

I ALSO REALLY LOVE PHANTOM JELLY FISH. The sygiomedusa gigantea (the phantom jelly) isa REALLY COOL JELLYFISH found in the MIDNIGHT ZONE!! IT HAS FEWER THAN 120 RECORDED SIGHTINGS. It is a jellyfish that is rarely seen, but believed to be WIDESPREAD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD (with exceptions to the arctic ocean) (a gif of the phantom jellyfish is underneath :3)

A VERY COMMON KNOWN JELLYFISH IS THE MOON JELLYFISH BEING IN A LOT OF STIMBOARDS ON TIKTOK AND STUFF!! they are REALLY TINY in person and are likely to be in aquariums(ive seen some:0)!!! (A gif of moon jellys r underneath :3)

GRRR BUT MY HAND IS CRAMPING CUZ I WAS DRAWING 2 SECONDS AGO SO THATS ALL

:3

[cerebrodigital]

En la Tierra, solo el 15% de las especies que la habitan están catalogadas. Entre el grupo de criaturas desconocidas se encuentra esta misteriosa medusa, la cual solo ha sido avistada 2 veces en toda su historia.

Te contamos todo sobre este extraño animal:

[loneberry]

The Chirodectes Maculatus—an ultra rare box jellyfish

Halitrephes maasi jelly

The eternal sunless blizzard of the abyssal zone

Convince me the ocean isn’t pure poetry! As Rachel Carson said in her 1952 National Book Award speech, “If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”

[donuts4evry1]

Jellyfish that would be cool to cosplay as:

Chirodectes maculatus

Marivagia stellata

Cassiopea sp.

Halitrephes maasi

Olindias formosus

Pelagia noctiluca

Chrysaora achlyos

[seeasunset]

❝Y'know as creepy and big they can be, the extremely-rare Chirodectes Maculatus are pretty cool. They are part of the species of spotted box jelly.❞

[hazimiai]

Chirodectes maculatus, an exceptionally rare box jellyfish which had previously only been sighted once

[this-is-not-a-slow-burn]

WOAH!! This is incredible!

Chirodectes maculatus

[aaronjhill]

THE VERY RARE CHIRODECTES MACULATUS God is quite an artist. The species is not harmful to humans.

[eggothesquirrel]

Very well

Favorite color: purple

Relationship status: single?

Song stuck in my head: Hitchcock by Yorushika

Last thing I listened to: Making Flippy Floppy by Talking Heads

Last thing I googled: chirodectes maculatus

Favorite food: fried chicken with sauce

Anything I want rn: a really close friend, to be done with my college work

I summon (respectfully):

@silverbridge-harbor @dehydratedlydia @kooldewd123 @bill-cipher-enjoyer @flightyquinn @phinatheeeper

tagged in this post by @theequeersdeservebetter. finally getting around to my drafts today lol.

Relationship status: single

Favorite color(s): green

Song stuck in my head: Keep You in Line by Jamie Berry

Last thing I listened to: currently listening to To My Knees by Two Feet

Last thing I googled: the dog show my coworker is in

Favorite food: ramen (but the kind with eggs, veggies or kimchi, and chicken or beef if i'm in the mood for it)

Anything I want right now: a car that works

tagging (no pressure!) @dinosaurguts and @extemporary-username

[gooberto]

Monster girls are seasonally appropriate too!

Felt like trying to do a Deep Sea GF, so here’s a girl based on the extremely rare and unique Chirodectes Maculatus jellyfish.

[certified-diplodocus]

Sooo... jellyfish.

You may have seen this video circulating recently. The original was posted on Facebook by Scuba Ventures Kavieng; this is a colour-corrected edit [link to the original in the post source, because Tumblr is stupid about external links]. It caused a small stir on the internet after being tentatively identified as Chirodectes maculatus, a monotypic genus known only from a single small specimen captured and filmed in 1997, off the coast of Queensland. (That footage is sadly not available on the Internet.)

If you know a little about jellies, you’ll recognise this as a box jellyfish or Cubozoan. Box jellies are wonderfully interesting animals, and differ from the more familiar “true jellyfish” or Scyphozoa in a number of ways:

a more developed nervous system allowing more complex behaviour, including the capacity to learn from experience

true eyes (with retinas, corneas, lenses, the whole shebang)

the ability, unlike true jellies which mostly drift, to actively propel themselves around obstacles and towards prey

...a concerning trait in an animal most notorious for being extremely fatal to humans. (c.f. Wasp Jellyfish, Viper Jellyfish, the delightfully named Common Kingslayer, Irukandji*) * sting symptoms include excruciating pain and “a feeling of impending doom”, and let’s raise a glass to the researcher who first documented Irukandji syndrome by deliberately testing it on himself, a lifeguard, and his nine-year old son: “Eschewing animal models and laboratory studies (not to mention all common sense), Barnes took the two specimens, and proceeded directly to human experimentation.” please read the article linked in my reblog, it’s hilarious. (A lack of self-preservation is a trait apparently common to all jellyfish scientists - the 2005 article on Chirodectes maculatus notes that it failed to sting, or adhere to, the hand and forearm of an incautious volunteer.)

The point is that box jellies are deeply, deeply cool in every respect except basic body plan, which goeth thusly:

box

tentacle on each of the four lower corners

....and while many cubozoans find that four is not enough and multiply to get 4n tentacles, that’s about it. Ultimately, what you end up with is still just a translucent jelly box with string hanging from each corner, like a very sad, very dangerous piñata.

Compare scyphozoans / "true jellies": [top to bottom: Pacific sea nettles Chrysaora fuscescens aka windows screensaver, barrel jellyfish Rhizostoma pulmo, sea cauliflower Cephea cephea, moon jelly Aurelia aurita, lion's mane jellyfish Cyanea capillata]

They may not be all that bright, but by god they’re fancy.

Now let's see the box jellies: [Bonaire banded box jellyfish, which rejoices in the name of Tamoya ohboya; sea wasp Chironex fleckeri; Copula sivickisi; Tripedalia cystophora]

And by cubozoan standards, it is big: according to the diver, "a bit bigger than a soccer ball" (which have a ~21cm diameter), which would make it larger than the 15cm in the original species description.

Where am I going with all this? My point, dear jelly lovers, is that Chirodectes maculatus took a body plan like an inverted plastic bag and made it into the fanciest, most ostentatious chunk of jelly that ever wobbled the seven seas.

Look at it. It’s like a 1970s lampshade set off to colonise the ocean. And isn't it just fabulous.

Please reblog the linked post for sources and further reading. All images via Wikimedia Commons (licensed with some version of Creative Commons.)