Aleesha Hansel
BE careful of your step Portuguese man-of-war have landed.
With long purple tentacles, that sting at best and can be fatal at worst, the floating terror has been spotted along the beaches of the Costa del Sol.
Named because their shape is reminiscent of an 18th Century Portuguese battleship at full sail, the marine creatures cannot move themselves and instead rely on winds, currents, and tides.
The recent influx is thought to be due to the heavy winds and storms that have battered Spain over the last few months.
The venom, containing a combination of amino acids, is used to paralyse small fish which makes up a large part of the carnivore’s diet.
Despite often being described as a jellyfish they are actually siphonophores, as unlike jellyfish that are a single multicellular organism, the man-of-war is a colonial organism made up of individual animals of the same species.
