8 arms, no brain

Jellyfish were around 650million years ago – long before the dinosaurs

The collective noun is a fluther, smack, bloom or swarm

Barrel jellyfish have eight arms covered with hundreds of little mouths used to catch and eat prey

Jellyfish do not have brains, instead having nerve nets which can spot changes in the environment

If a jellyfish is cut in half, it can create a second version of itself

‘Jellyfish’ is ‘medusa’ in Italian and Spanish – after the Gorgon whose snakes for hair resemble tentacles