Cnidocytes (10959210853)

Description:

Summary[edit] Description: Cnidocytes Desiccation doesn't staunch it; the creature can be dead, yet the blue sting lingers, primed for inflicting pain. It's as though, by some osmosis, those strings of cells had leached the ocean's pigments, transmuted surf and sky into poison: a perfect concentrate, pure as lapis. Coelenterates have evolved, out of jelly, an exquisite armoury against higher animals: penetrant, glutinant, volvent, all deployed blindly - touch-triggered murders, without a trace of malice. They cooperate: buoyant on pucker-sealed pneumatocysts, spine-primed cnidocytes are eager to glut sucker-mouthed gastrozooids with stunned and twitching flesh. Poem by Giles Watson, 2013. The picture shows tentacles of a stranded specimen of Physalia utriculus, the Portugese Man o' War, colloquially known as the Bluebottle. Date: 20 November 2013, 08:40. Source: Cnidocytes. Author: Giles Watson from Oxfordshire, England.