When MBARI’s exploration meets Monterey Bay Aquarium's innovation 🤩✨️⁠ ⁠ Bloody-belly comb jellies, Lampocteis cruentiventer, are ctenophores, not true jellies. Like other comb jellies, they navigate through the water by beating their shimmering, hair-like cilia. These crimson beauties are found in the twilight zone, using their blood-red stomachs to hide a belly full of glowing (bioluminescent) prey. At these depths, red is nearly invisible, turning their vibrant color into the perfect camoufl

The blood-red stomach disguises the glowing prey inside. Many of the deep-sea animals the bloody-belly comb jelly preys upon can bioluminesce, or create their own light. The translucent predator needs to conceal its stomach—or risk its most recent meal lighting it up from the inside out and alerting potential predators to its whereabouts. Red is nearly invisible in the deep sea, so the vibrant crimson that gives this comb jelly its name is actually helping it hide from its predators. Bloody-bell

Dazzling deep-sea comb jelly. ❤️ Bloody-belly comb jellies are ctenophores. Like other comb jellies they navigate through the water by beating their shimmering hair like cilia. The sparkling display we see in this video clip comes from light diffracting from these tiny transparent cilia. At the depths where this comb jelly lives it’s nearly invisible to predators and prey because the color red appears black and allows the animal to blend into the dark background. These twilight zone treasures ar

105K views · 6.7K reactions | Fascinující mořská kráska Lampocteis cruentiventer patří mezi žebernatky - je tedy součástí jedné z nejprimitivnější a současně nejstarších větví živočichů. Tito tvorové se pohybovali v pozemských oceánech už před asi 600 miliony lety... (Video: MBARI) | Věda 24 | Facebook