#5040 · 🪼 jellyfish, starfish, worms & co
Indo-Pacific Man-O-War
Physalia utriculus
9 photos from iNaturalist (Creative Commons) · credits & licences
- 1. © uwkwaj · CC BY-NC 4.0
- 2. © Carole BERNARD · CC BY-NC 4.0
- 3. © tunicatedreamz · CC BY 4.0
- 4. © Dennis Rabeling · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- 5. © Dennis Rabeling · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- 6. © Fran Wiesner · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- 7. © Alfred Daniel J · CC BY-NC 4.0
- 8. © Malcolm Tattersall · CC BY-NC 4.0
- 9. © kaotay · CC BY-NC 4.0
what is it?
The Portuguese man o' war ( Physalia physalis ), also known as the man-of-war or bluebottle , is a marine hydrozoan found in the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. It was once thought that there was only one species in the genus Physalia , which in turn would make it the only genus in the family Physaliidae . But recently, through whole genome sequencing, researchers discovered that 4 species exist: Physalia physalis, Physalia utriculus, Physalia megalista and Physalia minuta. It’s...
base stats
Bars compare against all animals on log scales: up to 300,000 Dutch and 600,000 worldwide sightings (the most-seen species), 150 t (blue whale), 30 m and 400 years (Greenland shark).
fun facts
- No confirmed wild sightings in the Netherlands on iNaturalist: you'd have to travel for this one.
- 5,143 observations worldwide on iNaturalist.
fact sheet
- English
- Indo-Pacific Man-O-War
- scientific name
- Physalia utriculus
- class
- Hydrozoa
- order
- Siphonophorae
- family
- Physaliidae
- sightings in NL
- 0
- sightings worldwide
- 5,143
- weight
- —
- length
- —
- lifespan
- —
relatives· Physaliidae
Sources: iNaturalist taxon 1631517, Wikipedia (EN), Wikipedia (NL). Intro text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-24.