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Jellyfish Facts For Kids
Interesting Facts About Jellyfish For Kids
Thank you so much for being here today! You have no idea how excited I am for you to learn about Jellyfish today! These jellyfish facts for kids are not only amazing, but you will think differently of these seemingly simple creatures before you leave here today. It’s definitely just about time to start learning some interesting facts about jellyfish for kids!
For the most part in this article today, we are going to be going over moon jellyfish facts for kids. I will be general when possible, but when speaking about a specific jellyfish the moon jellyfish will be my reference point. They are the most common and also often referred to as the common jellyfish. After we go over the moon jellyfish I will dedicate a part of this article to go over some of the other popular and very cool jellyfish types. So, keep reading after the initial facts.
Jellyfish are everywhere in the ocean. They will roam the deep depths, they will also be gliding along the shallow coast line. They can be found in warm water, they can also be found in cold water. Did you know that jellyfish have been hanging out in the ocean longer than dinosaurs have been around? Pretty amazing huh? They have been around for millions of years.
Jellyfish can be dangerous! They have little cells in their tentacles that can either paralyze or stun people. Obviously being paralyzed or stunned in the water is not a good thing for a human, often deadly.
There are many different kinds of jellyfish, some are clear others are vibrant in color and even luminescent. For over 1700 years the Chinese have been fishing for jellyfish for their medicinal purposes and are considered a delicacy.
Let’s take a look at some jellyfish facts for kids that will cover the basics. After this part, we get into the interesting facts about jellyfish for kids!
Moon Jellyfish Facts For Kids
Interesting Facts About Jellyfish For Kids
Here are some quick but interesting facts about the most common jellyfish on the planet. They are referred to as the common jellyfish or the moon jellyfish.
Jellyfish Life Cycle Facts For Kids
Amazing Jellyfish Life Cycle Information
Before we go into interesting jellyfish facts for kids, we need to go over the jellyfish life cycle. In the below facts, I will be referencing certain phrases like medusa and polyps, and it’s important for you to understand this process to know what I’m actually talking about. Check out the diagram below, to help fully understand the life cycle of a jellyfish.
If you want more detailed info about the life cycle of a jellyfish, go to the bottom of this article for more info.
Fun Jellyfish Facts For Kids
Jellyfish Facts For Kids
This is the part of the article I’m sure you were waiting for! Were about to talk about some pretty amazing and fun jellyfish facts for kids. These interesting facts about jellyfish for kids are going to cover all jellyfish. Not just the moon jellyfish. So sit down, grab something to drink and a snack, and let’s talk jellyfish!
♦ A large group of jellyfish is called a swarm, or sometimes a smack.
♦ Try not to confuse a swarm with a bloom when referring to jellyfish. A swarm is a group of jellyfish that get together in one area. A bloom is a dense jellyfish cloud that is caused by a spike in reproduction.
♦ A large bloom of jellyfish can have over 100,000 jellyfish!
♦ Some jellyfish are very hard to see, appearing almost invisible to the human eye.
♦ Jellyfish are 95% water.
♦ Jellyfish lack a skeleton and have soft bodies so fossils are rare. There is evidence that shows that jellyfish predate dinosaurs by some 400 million years.
♦ A historic or maybe a sad day for jellyfish came in May of 1991. There were almost 2500 moon jelly polyps and jellyfish babies shot into space aboard the shuttle Columbia. Dorothy Spangenberg of Eastern Virginia Medical School had an opportunity to use them to learn about weightlessness and it’s impact to juvenile jellyfish. She also was able to monitor the calcium loss, which can be important for understanding the impacts on humans in space.
♦ Some Jellyfish are considered a delicacy in parts of Asia. The Blubber jellyfish is edible.
♦ Most jellyfish have a rather short life cycle, only living a few days to a few months. The species of jellyfish called Turritopsis nutricula could be immortal. The reports of this jellyfish claim it can play it’s life cycle in reverse. It can actually move from the adult Medusa back to an immature polyp.
♦ Jellyfish will actually eat other jellyfish in certain circumstances.
♦ It’s not just a skeleton that jellyfish lack, they also don’t have a head, brain or heart.
♦ We are learning more about jellyfish all the time! One recent study found that of the 24 eyes the box jellyfish has, 4 of them always point up. They are in constant search for tree branches above the waters surface. This is how it knows to swim toward mangrove swamps where it will feed.
♦ In 2008 Osamu Shimomura won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies on medical applications associated with Jellyfish. GFP, a green fluorescent protein found in crystal jellyfish is now known to have important medical applications. A version of GFP and a gene from a rhesus macaque known to block a virus that causes feline AIDS into a cats unfertilized eggs. This part is amazing. When the kittens were born they actually glowed green under an ultraviolet light, which indicated that the transfer of the gene was successful.
♦ Watch out for dead jellyfish too! In 2010 a huge lion’s mane jellyfish died and 
found it’s way to Wallis Sands Stat Park in New Hampshire. There were around 150 swimmers that were stung by it’s tentacles.
♦ Medusa (medusae plural) is another word for jellyfish. Medusa is also the word for jellyfish in Hebrew, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Russian, Slovak, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, French, Spanish, Greek, Finnish, Portuguese and Romanian. Why are we calling them jellyfish?
♦ The jellyfish is not actually a fish, some now consider the name a misnomer. The American public aquariums have been making an attempt to make the term jellies or sea jellies more popular.
♦ The skin of a jellyfish is thin enough that the body is oxygenated by diffusion, they do not have a respiratory system to breath.
♦ The venom from a box jellyfish is considered the most deadly in all the animal kingdom. It has caused at least 5,568 recorded deaths since 1954. There are about 500,000 sindasites found in each tentacle. They are harpoon shaped needles that shoot the venom into the person.
♦ The largest known species of jellyfish is the lions mane jellyfish. The largest recorded specimen had a body (bell) that was 2.3 meters (7 feet 6 inches or as tall as Yao Ming) in diameter and the tentacles reached a staggering 36.5 meters (120 feet). In 1870 it was found washed up on the Massachusetts Bay shore.
♦ Typically you will find a jellyfish in shallow warmer coastal water, but there have been jellyfish discovered over 30,000 feet or 9,000 meters deep. Some jellyfish can survive in subarctic waters.
♦ A jellyfishes tentacle can still sting, even after it’s been separated from the hosts body.
♦ There are a couple of very small Jellyfish I would like to talk about real quick. The 
creeping jellyfish has a bell of about 0.5 mm to just a few mm in diameter. It reproduces asexually by splitting it’s body in half. Another contender, about the size of a fingernail, is the extremely toxic Australian Irukandji.
♦ The giant Stygiomedusa jellyfish has only been spotted 17 times in the last 110 years. They are extremely rare.
♦ The Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish are typically around 30 feet long, but can reach sizes of up to 165 feet. On a professional baseball diamond, that reaching from home plate to fist base and half way to 2nd base. These jellyfish can swarm with over 1000 other jellyfish in warm waters. Not a swarm I would like to run into! They can also shrink the size of their bladder temporarily to make themselves sink.
♦ Jellyfish blooms (remember that’s a spike in jellyfish breading, not the same as a swarm) near Japan can have over 500 million jellyfish, all about the size of a refrigerator.
♦ The collagen harvested from Jellyfish is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, amonth other things.
♦ The venom in a single box jellyfish can kill up to 60 people.
♦ Jellyfish account for more deaths than sharks do each year.
♦ Some claim urine on a jellyfish sting will neutralize it’s effects. Neuroscientists say urine is ineffective for this purpose.
♦ The uncoiling of the jellyfish’s small stingers is one of the single most fast actions in nature. Stingers actually come out faster than a bullet out of a gun.
Jellyfish Facts For Kids
Check out some cool jellyfish and ocean stuff!
Interesting Jellyfish Facts For Kids Video
Jellyfish Facts For Kids
10 Amazing And Famous Species Of Jellyfish
There are so many amazing species of jellyfish out there, I had to include a list of 10 here. We spoke of jellyfish in general, mainly referencing the moon or common jellyfish, but I wanted to include photos and descriptions of some amazing jellyfish species.
1. Box Jellyfish
We spoke about these guys a lot. Rightfully so, they are the most venomous creature in the ocean. Their box shaped medusa is how they earned their name. Their stings are potent and often times deadly to humans.
2. Cannonball Jellyfish
It’s name derives from it’s appearance to often times look like a large ball or round shape. It’s about 10 inches in diameter as an adult and is sometimes colored with some brown pigment.
3. Purple Striped Jellyfish
This jellyfish exists off the coast of California in Monterey Bay. This guy grows about 2.3 feet in diameter and typically has a cool pattern of stripes. it has 8 marginal long dark arms and four central frilly oral arms. Fancy!
4. Mediterranean or Fried Egg Jellyfish
This is one of the more strange jellyfish on the list. It has the odd appearance of a fried egg. It’s one of the few jellyfish that can move on it’s own and not just use the current.
5. Darth Vader Or The Narcomedusae Jellyfish
This jellyfish is found in the arctic and is a fairly newly discovered species. I think it’s rather obvious how it earned its nickname. It resembles the helmet of the ever famous Darth Vader. It has 4 tentacles and 12 stomach pouches. It holds it’s venomous tentacles out in the front to better hunt for prey.
6. Crossota sp Jellyfish.
Not too much is known about this guy, he was discovered in 2005 by the Arctic 2005 exploration of the Hidden Ocean. Looks like a beanie to me!
7. Black Sea Nettle Jellyfish
The black sea nettle jellyfish is found in the Pacific Ocean. It was named the Black Jellyfish for it’s dark coloration. They are a little bigger, and can be as large as 3 feet in the medusa and tentacles can be as big as 20 feet in length.
8. Breede River Jellyfish
These little guys form in large swarms in the Breede River during summer, hence the name. Their numbers decrease during autumn and disappear in winter.
9. White Spotted Jellyfish
These are really neat. They have white dots on their bell giving them almost a wedding dress type appearance. They are very elegant and fancy looking. They are also called the Australian Spotted Jellyfish.
10. Lions Mane Jellyfish
Here is the big boy of the ocean. There is only one jellyfish that is bigger but they are so rare they have only been spotted 17 times in over 50 years. So the title for largest in my eyes, go to this guy! Check him out next to the diver, it kind of puts it into perspective for you.
Jellyfish Facts For Kids
Jellyfish Facts For Kids Conclusion
Wow, there is a lot of information out there about jellyfish! I did my best to include the important stuff as well as some interesting and fun jellyfish facts for kids. This article took a lot of research, but I enjoyed learning more about jellyfish! I hope you had as much fun as I did learning about these absolutely amazing creatures of the ocean. They are often deadly and ominous, but beautiful and elegant at the same time.
If you liked this page about jellyfish, there is another page on our site you must see. It’s a collection of really strange an amazing creatures. Most of which you may have never heard of or knew existed. Please, click the link below to go check it out.
Top 20 most amazing creatures you never knew existed.
If you liked the jellyfish, you will probably also like learning about the octopus. They are one of the most amazing creatures on our planet! Click the link below, this was another article that took many hours of research, but was a blast!
Click Here For Octopus Facts For kids
Click here for detailed info about the jellyfish life cycle.
Jellyfish facts for kids
