https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/20/terrorising-us-bluebottle
Every bluebottle population floats freely on the surface of the ocean, made up of “an unbelievable number” of individual “colonies”. These colonies are what are commonly referred to as “bluebottles” but are actually a collection of semi-autonomous parts fused together.
Each colony is also either left-handed or right-handed, with the sail on top of the animal angled one way or the other.
When a breeze picks up at just the right angle, it will carry off only a small number of colonies at any given time, ensuring the whole population isn’t lost in one gust.
Even more weirdly, every individual bluebottle colony is a hermaphrodite with both male and female reproductive organs, and each of the autonomous components is responsible for its own function such as feeding, stinging or reproduction.
Gershwin said that for humans it would be as if each arm and leg operated entirely independently, with each limb having its own critical job required to keep the whole alive. |  |
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