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Moon Jelly — printable fact sheet
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Animal Fact Sheet
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Moon Jelly
Aurelia aurita
Aurelia aurita is the translucent, saucer-shaped jelly most people have seen washed up on a beach, and the four pale horseshoes visible through the bell are not a nervous system or a stomach but gonads, sitting above four gastric pouches. The bell is roughly 95 percent water and…
Did you know?
- Despite their simple biology, moon jellies can survive in low-oxygen waters where many other marine animals cannot.
- The polyp stage is effectively immortal in practice — it can keep budding new jellies for years, so one settled larva can supply a bay with thousands of medusae. Moon jellies carried on the Space Shuttle in 1991 developed abnormal graviceptors and, once returned to Earth gravity, swam in disoriented loops, revealing how gravity shapes development. In low-oxygen dead zones where fish suffocate, moon jellies persist and often dominate, which is one reason jelly blooms track coastal pollution.
What I learned
Draw the moon jelly
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