Siphonophores declared as the longest marine animal

Is it just us or are you also curious about the marine world? After all, there’s so much that still remains a mystery and away from our sight. Recently, scientists have declared the longest animal of the sea. It’s called siphonophores and it was discovered only two years back. In 2020, when the world was preoccupied with the COVID-19 pandemic, marine biologists discovered a long and gelatinous underwater creature that looked suspended in a giant spiral, much like a huge rope. It was 600 metres long (way longer than a blue whale) and traced near a canyon off the coast of Western Australia.  

A siphonophore looks like a mammoth-sized jellyfish and belongs to the order Hydrozoa and the genus Apolemia, the group that often looks like ‘tangled feather boas.’ This marine animal is a close relative of blue bottles, also called man o’ war. Blue bottles appear like a balloon, has deadly tentacles and is native to Portugal.  

The spiral arrangement of siphonophores is such that it helps them catch their preys by spreading their stinging tentacles into something called a “wall of death” by the scientists. However, they only feed on small animals such as fish and crustaceans.  

What’s interesting here is that, the scientists were not even looking for a new species but was rather focussing on the survival habits of deep-sea animals. They just accidentally came across this gigantic floating creature stuck on the seabed. In fact, information about siphonophore was part of the data, images and samples collected by a research submersible named Falkor, owned and run by Australia’s Schmidt Ocean Institute.  

Sources cite that initially, siphonophore was thought to be a kind of huge jellyfish, but later, after the first round of analysis, it was declared as a single organism. What’s unique about siphonophores is that, unlike most animals that have different organs performing different bodily functions, they only have a bunch of same individual parts called ‘zooids.’ While some zooid is responsible for forging, others for reproduction and defence.  

Though the announcement of siphonophore being the longest ever sea animal has been out in the world, any kind of world record is yet to be attributed. Why? Because scientists just want to make sure that they got the estimate correct, the first time over. In fact, to make this possible, they are once again sending a submarine installed with a photogrammetry system, that is equipped to take clear resolution underwater images ideal for marine research.