[HN Gopher] Occasional Paper: Four Hidden Species of Portuguese ...
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       Occasional Paper: Four Hidden Species of Portuguese Man-O'-War
        
       Author : akkartik
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2024-12-14 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (crookedtimber.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (crookedtimber.org)
        
       | hanszarkov wrote:
       | Fascinating read. Never knew about these 'aggregate' organisms.
        
       | oersted wrote:
       | We get lots of these in the Bay of Biscay for some reason. Not
       | really warm waters, it's the North-is Atlantic. I guess it's mild
       | in summer, that's when we get them.
        
       | lisper wrote:
       | > a single Portuguese man-o'-war is composed of four or five
       | separate animals.
       | 
       | Sorry, no. Just because they are not physically connected to each
       | other doesn't make them separate animals. They are a single
       | animal made of parts that happen not to be physically attached to
       | one another. This is not uncommon in nature. Colony insects like
       | ants and bees and termites are even more extreme examples of
       | this. An individual ant (or bee or termite) is not an organism
       | any more than (say) your spleen is. Most ants (or bees or
       | termites) are sterile. They cannot reproduce. It is the _colony_
       | that is the organism, not the individual insect.
        
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       (page generated 2024-12-14 23:00 UTC)