Occasional paper: Blue Angels, Devil Hands

That’s the actual name of the paper. Isn’t that great?Here’s a prologue: a post I wrote a while back about the Portuguese Man-o’-War. (It’s kind of long — I was new to CT back then, and still figuring stuff out). To summarize: the Portuguese Man-o’-War is a large jellyfish-type creature. And when I say “large”, I mean they can grow as big as a large cat, with stinging tentacles dangling for many meters beneath and around them. They’re carnivores, feeding on fish and small invertebrates. Their stings paralyze prey, which is then drawn upward into the main body, digested, and eaten. (In that order.) In the post I mention that they have a parasitic fish that afflicts them, but I don’t talk about any of their other relationships. (As I said, that post was plenty long enough.) So now I’m going to talk about an organism that interacts with the Man-o’-War in a different way: a predator. Specifically Glaucus Atlanticus, the Blue Dragon Sea Slug.[yes, they really look like this.] Also known as…