Have you been to the beach in the last few years? If so was the only thing you could think about was “Please don’t let that jellyfish touch me! Please don’t let that jellyfish touch me! Please don’t let that jellyfish touch me!”. And was that because of those slimy tentacles that smear venomous pain-inducing mucus on you?
I had those thoughts too. But it turns out that if you actually take a strong microscope coupled with a 2,200 fps Phantom Miro camera you see that it is not the slime that hurts you, it is millions of small syringes that extend from the jellyfish and inject venom into your skin.
Dustin of SmarterEveryDay coupled with Dr. Seymour of James Cook University attached a Phantom MIRO to a microscope and made a jellyfish attack using a 9V battery. It turns out that when a jellyfish attack, it is not just small stings that brush up against your skin, it is actually millions of small cell-sized syringes that spring out and actively inject venom into your skin. You can think about those miniature syringes (called Nematocyst) like a garden hose: They are rolled inside the tentacle when loose, but when called into action, they are filled with venom and extend, then they actually inject the venom. The entire thing takes about one hundredth of a second.
[Jellyfish Stinging in MICROSCOPIC SLOW MOTION – Smarter Every Day 120 | Smarter Every Day]