English: Portuguese Man o' War (Physalia physalia) at the Beach of Cumbuco/Brasil
Deutsch: Portugiesische Galeere (Physalia physalia) am Strand von Cumbuco/Brasilien
Date 23 September 2008
Author Pixelschubser https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pixelschubser
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Physalia_physalis_cumbuco_brasilia.jpg

The Atlantic Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis), also known as the man-of-war, blue bottle, or floating terror, is a marine hydrozoan of the family Physaliidae found in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its venomous tentacles can deliver a painful (and sometimes fatal) sting. Despite its outward appearance, the Portuguese man o' war is not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, which, unlike jellyfish, is not actually a single multicellular organism, but a colonial organism made up of specialized individual animals called zooids or polyps. The Indo-Pacific Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia utriculus), or blue bottle, is a related species with very similar appearance found throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Order: Siphonophora
Family: Physaliidae
Genus: Physalia
Species: Physalia physalis (Linnaeus, 1758)