BOX JELLY FISH

Wat this?

It is jelly fish belong to the cubozoa class .It is a cnidarian an invertebrate, where it is extremely venomous. The first prize goes to this jelly fish for the world most venomous animal. It has killed at least 5567 deaths since1954.

DESCRIPTION

The box jelly fish is normally visible and it is light blue in color. They are cubed in figure with four different eyes. Each face has 15 tentacles, with the estimate of 5000 nematocysts, which are the minute cutting cells located on their tentacles. They can able to see though the four eyes. It avoids the tiny objects and but it is almost invisible in water.

• Life span – less than one year

• Size – 3m long; 25cm across

• Weight – 2kg

RANGE

• Australia

• Indo pacific

It often appears after a local rain.

HABITAT

They like to droop about river mouths, estuaries and specially stream after rain. When the tide is intensifying they tend to travel towards low water. They don’t like deep waters and rough seas. They will not travel over coral leafs and sea grass.
DIET

They eat small fish and crustaceans.

VENOM

The venom of jelly fish is highly cardiotoxic.When the sting is injected, it is rapt into the transmission where the pain is terrible and severe; the tentacles become sticky and hold strongly to the skin. If we try to remove the sting when it is active it will cause a severe injury severe stings result in necrosis of injured place. It toxin affect the heart, nervous system and skin cells. The worst part of this attack is terrible pain which leads to heart attack for the human. We have to treat it as soon as possible. The sea turtles are the only unaffected by this jelly.

TREATMENT

Vinegar should be applied for minimum 30 sec. because the vinegar has acetic acid. This disables the jelly nematocysts though it will lighten pain. When the sting becomes inactive, they can be easily removed and then the patient should be transmitted to the hospital