Interesting Photo of the Day: Portuguese Man O’ War

Interesting Photos

One of the most unusual sea creatures looks like a jellyfish, but it’s actually more than one organism. While beautiful to look at, the creature can give you a painful sting. Unlike a jellyfish, the Man O’ War, or Bluebottle, is actually a siphonophore, made up of smaller creatures called zooids that all rely on each other to survive and cannot separate themselves without dying. Photographer Matthew Smith captured an amazing shot of this one:

Portuguese Man O’ War by Matthew Smith (Via The Atlantic. Click image to see full size.)

Smith said of this creature,

“Despite their potentially dangerous sting, the Bluebottle Cnidaria is an amazingly beautiful creature. I wanted to demonstrate this with careful lighting and composition. After strong NE winds hundreds of these Cnidaria are blown into the bays around my home town and trapped overnight, enabling me to get my shots.”

Smith lives in Australia and focuses mainly on the half over, half under photo technique seen here and has won multiple awards for nature photography.