The Portuguese man o' war: is it one animal or several? Both, actually.
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2022
- Yes, it's true: the Portuguese man o' war is a colony of animals. Except... probably not in any way that you think. This gets pretty confusing, so let's dive in.
Links to sources:
Munro et al., 2019 - doi.org/10.1038
Munro et al., 2018 - doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2018....
www.siphonophores.org 
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crazy underrated video this is the best explanation of colonial hydrozoans i've found!
My wife and I just found a bunch of these on the beach, your answered every question we had, in order, with perfect graphics!
Awesome vid! The visuals had so much effort behind them which I really appreciate.
at last, a video that answers questions I’ve had literally ever since I first learned about the Portuguese Man o’ War! and the drawings and diagrams are incredibly charming, too.
especially enjoyed the Pando (and aspen colonies generally) comparison; we’re big Pando fans in this house. :V
The cat analogy at the end is awesome : )
I like your every 2 to 9 year appearances. I’m subscribing for sure
The perfection of god
Thank you! This is exactly the kind of video I was looking for! I never felt i really understood what a man o' war was, but that was excellently explained, and now i do
Oh I finally understand why zoids are not organs and what homology actually is! I was fascinated by siphonophores weeks ago but I never really grasp the more technical concepts, so thank you for your great explanation.
Man, i looked a lot to find this. Great commenting, great didactics, great content. Thank you!
It's like an organism made up of identical twins, conjoined in specific ways, with each twin specializing in one specific physiological function.
Just a few weeks ago, I remember seeing how "alive" individual neuron cells looked as they moved around almost "crawling" around using their dendrites like little arms. In much the same vein of seeing our entire bodies as a colony of cells, I remember musing at how our consciousness could be defined as a hive mind of the neurons in our frontal lobes.
This is an /extremely/ fascinating point and it lead me down quite the rabbit hole in cognitive psychology! 😂
It is said that no matter how long a person lives, they will always be learning.
I've just watched you walking casually through the countryside, talking to [me] like a friend down the pub about a biological subject I thought I knew something about and then going full on scientific about it.
But I understood it.
You Sir are good!
I've not learnt so much explained so well in a long time.
Thank you for putting this video up; honestly, your presentation is refreshingly different and I think you could go far with this.
What a nice comment, thank you!
If you like this kind of conversational style, I really recommend Angela Collier. She's a physicist on RUclips who does really good videos on physics, chemistry and science in general. And unlike me, she makes a video more often than once every two years. And she owns a better camera. :p
@@OlleLindestad haha, well, if she's using a better camera...
But really, thank you; I'll have a look, see what she's saying.
I've still liked and subscribed to your channel though and will have a rummage around your collection.
A video every two years is not such a wait when the material is presented in a way that sinks in and gets remembered.
that -bunch of trees being one big individual- thing is some real Avatar the Last Air Bender shit i love it
That cat monstrosity seemed almost like it would belong in a Cyriak video.
Thank you! I love this. And your other videos, I'm glad I accidentally found this channel. My field (linguistics) has pretty much the same problem and the same answer to it. Under the right conditions classification depends on the context in which you discuss it.
Stumbled uppon your video. Loved it. Thank you.
Thank you veryyyy much! I always thought this question so difficult to understand but you made it clear for me.
Very comprehensive video! videos on the man o war as you pointed out tend to be kind of click baity so this was very helpful. All up to date now with the siphonophore debate.
Amazing video, here before this blows up, you should really do more frequent uploads. Greetings from Argentina
That was an AWESOME explanation! Thank you!!!👏👏
This is a great explanation and I love the added artwork!
Wow! Great video!
wow this video is awesome!! it really deserves more attention
In 1997 I was in the Navy at sea in the gulf of Mexico where we encountered a man of war from our indications the bubble atop the water was about 4' feet long over a foot wide and at least a foot high off the water and you could see the tentacles reaching well past 10' feet behind it probably much further this thing was huge with that crystal blue bubble color on top, it had a fish in it's grasps this fish was huge at least two and half feet in length it was bad ass. Wish I had a photo of it, I've never seen one equal to it even on RUclips !!!
Marvellous video. Thanks so much!
Excellent explanation...that clarified a lot!
Very interesting! Thank you for the explanation!
Great video. What bothers me is that pop science will call a man o’ war a colony but pando an individual. You’ll see whatever definition used that is most exciting, but also most confusing.
This is exactly right. :) When making the video I actually looked for an online pop sci magazine that had featured articles about both Pando and the man o' war, but I couldn't find one.
@@OlleLindestad Hope you'll do more youtube, it suits you really well. Cheers, from a former office mate.
What an absolutely horrifying analogy.. 😳
I'm incredibly grateful to you for having resolved a long-time unsatisfied question of mine: "What does being colonial mean in the context of siphonophores?".
Fantastic video, thank you. Subscribed.
So they're kind of like the hit anime TV show and toy line Voltron when all the lions combine into a giant man.
Well, they're like if Voltron started out as a *single* lion that split into five lions while staying attached in the shape of a giant man.
Excelent explanation, thanks
Thank you for explaining this!
Amazing video!
Please make more videos!!
Thank you for the great explanation, siphonophores are just so fascinating! What I can't really grasp is how pyrosomes are chordates and closer related to us than to siphonophores. How are they both made of zooids but not related?
Convergent evolution! The colonial lifestyle has proven useful, so it's evolved multiple times in unrelated groups. (Other independent examples include bryozoans and pterobranchs).
It's like how flapping flight has evolved three separate times in vertebrates, with the forelimbs being modified into wings each time, but each time in a slightly different way.
Great video
Thank you
Ty for the video. Can't wait to tell my family that I identify as a colony now.
Sava Safari sends her regards ✌️
Alright you got me, I'm subscribing
Hm, I think my preferred definition of "individual" is a more um, "instrumental" one. First, take the homological perspective individuals... Then, if one takes a hypothetical axe or scalpel and physically separates out these candidate individuals from each other, and they have a decent chance of surviving on their own post-separation, then it's a colony; otherwise, they together should have just been one individual.
This seems to align with what I want to call {aspens, human body parts, ants, etc.}, and I guess places the Portuguese man o' war in the "individual" category(?)
This is a very good point. In this sense, a man o' war is more of an individual, because each zooid is functionally interdependent on the rest. Whereas you can remove a single aspen tree from its root system, or break off a piece of a coral colony, and still have a fully functioning organism.
This guy's either really cool and interesting to hang out with or he's an irritating know-it-all who makes references to obscure fantasy books all the time.
mmmm, obscure fantasy books!
new sub!
Off topic, but where are you from? I cant figure it out from your accent or the environment around you.
Stockholm, Sweden.
wow very interesting and funny video
Complete ✅
Wow!!
great now i have to look up "pando" because it looks too interesting 🤦♂
Could've just mentioned man o' wars are siphonophores instead of being cnidarians, since the latter is a phylum and more broad.
The human body is a colony of individual organisms..lol!
In fact even those organisms are a colony of "ATOMS"...So whats youre point? 😆😆😆😎😎😎
Great video