Wik, wiki wikipedia
Siphonophorae or Siphonophora, the siphonophores, are an order of the Hydrozoa, a class of marine invertebrates belonging to the phylum Cnidaria. They are colonial, but the colonies can superficially resemble jellyfish; although they appear to be a single organism, each specimen is actually a colony of Siphonophora. The best known species is the dangerous Portuguese Man o' War (Physalia physalis)
(, Sun 28 Dec 2008, 12:44, Reply)
To be honest I consider anything that looks even remotely like this dangerous
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boyo81 was laying down his ordinance on, Sun 28 Dec 2008, 13:02,
Reply)
admittedly I haven't done any reading on the subject beyond wikipedia
but how does something like a portugese man o war reproduce?
I mean, if it's a collection of individuals then they'd all need to reproduce separately, right? how do they join together after birth?
I guess if it was difficult then there wouldn't be so many of the fuckers, but you get my point.
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gronkpan, Sun 28 Dec 2008, 13:49,
Reply)
Lies
Xenu has all the answers. Just send me £300,000 and all will be revealed
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boyo81 was laying down his ordinance on, Sun 28 Dec 2008, 14:56,
Reply)
Reproduction
Portuguese Man of Wars (men of war?) are a colony of genetically identical polyps. Each polyp is an individual organism in its own right, but is specialised to a certain role. They reproduce sexually using eggs and sperm, and then each offspring develops from a single organism by asexual reproduction so that the colony is a single genetic clone. As a result, the colony can reproduce successfully through just a few reproductive polyps.
This isn't all that different to yourself. There's no need for (say) your brain cells to produce sperm because the cells elsewhere can do it more efficiently with the same genetic relatedness. The difference is that your cells are organised into one large organism, whereas the Man of War has its cells divided into many organisms that are then organised into a larger colony that is analogous to a single organism.
www.aloha.com/~lifeguards/portugue.html for a little more...
(, Sun 28 Dec 2008, 17:31, Reply)