"City of Gonads" Jellyfish Discovered

Carolyn Barry in Sydney
for National Geographic News
Published May 6, 2010

Sporting a reproductive "skyline," a new species of jellyfish is like nothing else known under the sea, a new study says.

Shaped like flying saucers, both males and females of the new jellyfish have gonads on the outsides of their bodies, unlike any of the approximately 3,000 other jellyfish species known to science .

Gonads are the reproductive glands that produce sperm in males and eggs in females.

Arranged in a "crater" at the center of the jellyfish's top side, the gonads, upon close inspection, resemble "skyscrapers in a downtown business district," said Lisa-Ann Gershwin, curator of zoology at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Australia.


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