Summary: <p>We’re learning about comb jellies this week, along with the sea sponge, and the MASSIVE CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE TWO THAT IS PITTING SCIENTIST AGAINST SCIENTIST I might be overstating it just a bit</p> <p>The lovely Arctic comb jelly:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-377" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Arctic-comb-jelly-300x202.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="202"></p> <p>The lovely Venus’s girdle comb jelly:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-378" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/venus-girdle-comb-jelly-300x191.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="191"></p> <p>A fossil comb jelly. Probably lovely when it was alive:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-379" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/fossilcombjelly1-300x158.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="158"></p> <p>A sea sponge (most are not this Muppet-like):</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-380" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cookie-monster-sea-sponge-255x300.jpg" alt="" width="255" height="300"></p> <p><strong>Show transcript:</strong></p> <p>Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.</p> <p>For this week’s episode, we’re revisiting jellyfish, more properly known as jellies. The first jelly episode is far and away our most popular and I can’t figure out why. I mean, I’m glad people like it. This time, we’re going to learn all about comb jellies, which are not really as exciting as true jellies. There is no ship-sinkingly enormous comb jelly lurking in the oceans of the world. But they are really interesting.</p> <p>When you think of a jelly, you probably picture a roughly bell-shaped thing with long stinging tentacles. But most comb jellies are more like egg-shaped blobs, and either don’t have tentacles at all or only have relatively small tentacles that don’t sting. Although they look alike superficially, comb jellies and true jellies are so different that scientists don’t think they’re very closely related at all. Comb jellies are officially called ctenophores (TEN-oh-fours), spelled with a c-t at the beginning if you were wondering. I looked up the pronunciation. Yeah, I know, I pronounced Pliny wrong all through episode 12, but come on, it looks like it should be pronounced Pliny and not Plinny. It’s not like anyone ever came up to me and said, “Hey, what about that Plinny, what a guy.” I just read the name.</p> <p>But I digress, inexplicably.</p> <p>Instead of pulsing its bell to maneuver in the water, a comb jelly has rows of tiny compact filaments called cilia, fused together in combs that help it swim. The combs are also called swimming plates.</p> <p>There are two main types of comb jellies, those with tentacles and those without tentacles. The ones without are called Nuda, or Beroids, and while they don’t have tentacl</p>
