While walking on a Florida beach after a storm, I noticed that sea creatures, resembling inflated plastic bags, had washed up along the shore. I thought they might be sea jellies, but after some research, I concluded that the beach was littered with Portuguese man o’ war. They are so named because they resemble 18th century Portuguese warships and depend upon the wind and currents to move.

The Portuguese man o’ war may look like a bloated jellyfish, but it’s actually a siphonophore—a colony of specialized zooids that work together and cannot exist without one another. Long dangling tentacles contain venomous stingers used to paralyze prey. This sting is painful to humans.

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