Phylum Cnidaria: The Things that Sting

Welcome to Phylum Cnidaria! Here we start getting into the slightly more complex animals, just barely beating out the sponges. A defining characteristic in this phylum is their stinging cells: the cnidocytes. You can watch this cool video about cnidocytes (and how the stinging organelle, nematocysts, work) by checking out this 6 minute video by some researchers in Australia: • Jellyfish Stinging in ... .
This group contains various classes of stinging animals such as:
- Class Scyphozoa - Marine jellyfish ( • Class Scyphozoa: Takin... )
- Class Anthozoa - Sea anemones and coral ( • Class Anthozoa: The Fl... )
- Class Cubozoa - Box Jellyfish (video coming...sometime...)
- Class Hydrozoa - Everything else that stings (video coming...sometime...)
As always, phylogeny changes constantly as we learn new techniques to better explain the evolutionary relationships between organisms. These videos follow along with the free, online textbook OpenStax Biology 2e (openstax.org/b...) in Chapter 28.2: Phylum Cnidaria. This textbook also has review questions that are easily available to everyone for you to practice these topics more.