Recently, snorkeling instructor Katie Maggs went out for a swim in Cornwall, United Kingdom, and saw an animal who took her breath away. As a little translucent blob swam past her face, Maggs immediately identified the animal as a comb jelly.
“[H]e’s super rad,” Maggs wrote on Instagram.
While at first glance, the animal Maggs encountered looks like a jellyfish, comb jellies are actually a completely different species. Unlike jellyfish, who use stinging cells to catch their prey, comb jellies use sticky tentacles to catch crustaceans, larvae and other jellies.
Comb jellies are named after the hair-like structures known as combs that encircle their bodies. The invertebrates have eight rows of combs that divide their anatomies into equal segments. They use these rows of hair-like structures to swim through the open ocean.
“The combs act like tiny oars, propelling the comb jelly through the water,” the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History wrote on their website.
There are fossils of comb jellies that date back to 525 million years ago, making them some of the most ancient animals in the world. Because the species is so old, they have simple body structures and digestive systems. Comb jellies are the only animals in the world who don’t have a designated opening through which they expel waste.
“A new study showed that comb jellies in fact release indigestible particles through pores on the rear end of the animal,” the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History wrote.
While most comb jellies people encounter are just a few inches long, the animals can actually reach up to 5 feet long. A group of divers in Honduras recently encountered a group of the animals who were staggeringly huge.
Maggs encountered another jelly a few months later, and was amazed to see that the animal’s combs started to glow. As the combs moved through the water, they were lit up with every color of the rainbow.
“The comb-rows often produce a rainbow effect,” the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History wrote. “This is not bioluminescence, but occurs when light is scattered in different directions by the moving cilia.”
Regardless of the cause of the multicolored effect, there’s no denying that it’s spellbinding to watch. Everyone who’s been lucky enough to come across one of the unique animals has been mesmerized by the dazzling display.
“I for sure was visited by a rainbow alien,” another Instagram user who encountered a comb jelly wrote.
