You wouldn’t know it by looking at it, but the dinner plate jelly is a top predator. Photo: MBARI//YouTube
When one thinks of the ocean’s top predators, two likely spring to mind immediately: the great white shark and the orca whale. But there’s another one that, although it will never reach the notoriety of great whites or killer whales, should be mentioned. The dinner plate jelly is known to scientists or those fluent in Latin as the Solmissus, which is far less catchy.
Although it’s a jelly and jellies generally aren’t thought of as some of the world’s great hunters, the dinner plate jelly certainly works to change that.
“This denizen of the deep has an appetite for other gelatinous animals. Jellies, comb jellies, siphonophores, salps—they are all on the menu for Solmissus,” researchers at the Monterey Bay Research Institute (MBARI) wrote. “In fact, this jelly has one of the most diverse diets of all midwater animals—so far, we have seen Solmissus eating 21 different types of gelatinous prey.”
They have a unique way of hunting for food, which is unlike most other jellies. Instead of dragging its tentacles behind it and hoping that food gets stuck in them, the dinner plate jelly swims with its tentacles out, relying on stealth to get a meal.
“Swimming with those tentacles out in front allows Solmissus to catch their prey by surprise,” MBARI explained. “Before prey can sense the pulses of the approaching predator, the jelly’s crown of tentacles snares a meal. Forward-pointing tentacles also help the dinner plate jelly catch animals with long tentacles or skinny bodies, like raking up twigs in the lawn.”
Researchers at MBARI used underwater robots to get a closer look at the dinner plate jelly, and the footage is pretty astonishing.
