Please meet Tripedalia maipoensis, a newly-discovered species of box jelly fish that researchers found in a brackish shrimp pond in Hong Kong's Mai Po Nature Reserve. The box jellyfish (scientific class: Cubozoa) is named for its unusual body shape. This new species is the fourth in its family. From the Hong Kong Baptist University:
It has a transparent and colourless body with an average length of 1.5 cm. There are three tentacles that are up to 10 cm long at each of its four corners. Pedalia, a flat pedal-shaped structure at the base of each tentacle that looks like a boat paddle, allows box jellyfish to produce strong thrusts when they contract their bodies. (Video below.) They can thus swim faster than other kinds of jellyfish.
Like other box jellyfish, Tripedalia maipoensis has 24 eyes. The 24 eyes are equally divided into four groups, and each group of six eyes is located inside a sensory depression called a rhopalium on each side of the bell. In each group of eyes, the researchers believe that two of them have lenses that enable image-forming, while the other four can only sense light.
