Australian box jellyfish
Chironex fleckeri
— Where the name comes from
Chironex is a sinister hybrid compound: the Greek cheír, the hand, and the Latin nex, violent killing — “the hand that kills”. The epithet remembers Hugo Flecker, the Australian doctor who in the 1950s identified the cause of deaths among Queensland bathers that had until then been unexplained. The common name, sea wasp, gives the pain, and is the one used on the beaches.
— Facts
- Group
- Cnidarians · Cnidaria
- Order
- Box jellyfish
- Habitat
- Shallow turbid coastal waters, estuaries and mangroves
- Range
- Northern Australia and the western Indo-Pacific
- Size
- Bell up to 30 cm; tentacles up to 3 metres
- Diet
- Shrimps and small fish
- Lifespan
- Less than 1 year
— Characteristics
- 01
It has twenty-four eyes, some with cornea, lens and retina.
- 02
It swims actively at two knots rather than drifting.
- 03
It is among the most venomous animals known: it can kill an adult in minutes.
— What sets it apart
It has twenty-four eyes and no brain. They are gathered in four sensory clubs around the bell, and eight of them are complete eyes, with lens, iris and retina — built like ours, in an animal that possesses no central nervous system but only a ring of nerves. Two of these eyes always point upwards, held in position by a ballast weight, and serve to read the mangrove canopy through the surface of the water so that it does not stray from the shore. It is the only known animal that navigates by looking at trees from underwater.
