Swarm of Jellyfish-Like Creatures Turned Mallorca Beach Blue

Swarm of Jellyfish-Like Creatures Turned Mallorca Beach Blue

Golden sand? Not this week. One of Mallorca’s most popular tourist beaches turned a bizarre shade of blue after being completely blanketed by a swarm of stinging jellyfish-like creatures, leaving locals and sunseekers stunned—and more than a little grossed out. The culprit? A species known as by-the-wind-sailors, or Velella velella. These small, iridescent-blue sea blobs arrived by the hundreds of thousands, carpeting the shoreline and giving th…

The Brainless Conquerors: How Jellyfish Have Thrived for 650 Million Years

For hundreds of millions of years, while continents shifted and dinosaurs roamed, a seemingly simple creature has pulsed through the world’s oceans, a testament to resilience in its most basic form: the jellyfish. These gelatinous beings, often drifting ethereal phantoms, have an evolutionary history stretching back an astonishing 650 million years, predating the development of complex organs like the very brain we use to ponder their existence.…