You're a Jellyfish!

You’re a Jellyfish! LEVELED BOOK • O A Reading A–Z Level O Leveled Book Word Count: 718

Written by Kira Freed • Illustrated by Cende Hill

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You’re a Jellyfish! Level O Leveled Book © Learning A–Z Correlation Written by Kira Freed LEVEL O Written by Kira Freed Illustrated by Cende Hill Illustrated by Cende Hill Fountas & Pinnell M All rights reserved. Reading Recovery 20

www.readinga-z.com www.readinga-z.com DRA 28 Table of Contents This is a lion’s mane jellyfish. Floating at Sea ...... 4 Floating at Sea Jelly Bodies ...... 6 Imagine that your body is shaped like Getting Around ...... 8 a bell, and you have long tentacles Life Cycle ...... 10 streaming down under you . You are Hunter and Hunted ...... 11 mostly made of water and cannot survive away from it . You live in the ocean and People and Jellyfish ...... 13 travel by floating gracefully on currents . Conclusion ...... 15 You’re a jellyfish, or jelly, and not a fish Glossary ...... 16 at all . You’re a kind of invertebrate—an Index ...... 16 animal that has no backbone .

You’re a Jellyfish! • Level O 3 4 You and your jellyfish cousins live in Jelly Bodies every ocean in the world . Some also live Like all jellyfish, you have no brain, in lakes and ponds . Some live in warm heart, blood, or bones . Your body is water, and others prefer cold water . Some made of water, muscles, and nerves . You of your cousins are survivors—they’ve use your eyespots and nerve network to been around for 650 million years, since sense up and down, light and dark, and long before the time of dinosaurs . the world around you .

The main part of your body is your bell . Tentacles hang from around your edges like fringe .

bell A mouth and digestive sac digestive sac mouth hang in the center . Some of your cousins have frilly oral arms, or mouth arms, around this sac . oral arms These West Coast sea nettles look like a fleet of spaceships. tentacles

You’re a Jellyfish! • Level O 5 6 Getting Around

As a jellyfish, you spend most of your time drifting on ocean currents . But you can also move when you want to . First you let Do You Know? The smallest jellyfish is your bell fill with as tiny as a pearl. The largest water . Then you jellyfish is the lion’s mane squeeze the jellyfish. Its bell is wider than Then they pump it out again. the length of a bed. Its tentacles muscles in your can be as long as a school bus! bell the way a person blows You and your cousins come in many a bubble with shapes, sizes, and colors . Jellyfish that bubble gum . As live near the ocean’s surface are often you force water clear, or see-through . Jellies that live out of your bell, deep in the ocean may be red or purple . you shoot Some jellies are white with splashes of forward . color . Some deep-sea jellyfish even glow Jellyfish take in water. in the dark!

You’re a Jellyfish! • Level O 7 8 Some of your jellyfish cousins swim close Life Cycle to the ocean’s surface to bask in sunlight . You began your jellyfish life as an egg Others avoid light and stay deeper in the released into water by your mom . After ocean . Some live in the open ocean, while your dad fertilized the egg, it grew into others stay closer to shore . a tiny wormlike animal called a planula Like all jellyfish, you are not a social (PLAN-yoo-luh). The planula floated in animal . But divers and scientists often water for a few weeks . Then it attached find your kind in large groups . You and to a rock and developed into a polyp the other jellies aren’t enjoying each (PAHL-ip). other’s company . You just happen to be Over time, the polyp cloned itself in the same place at the same time . through a process called budding . It grew disks that popped off, swam away, and developed into adult jellyfish . One of those adults, or medusas (muh-DOO- suz), is you!

adult young medusa medusa

budding egg polyp polyp

planula

The moon jellyfish is one of the almost 200 kinds of jellyfish. Life Cycle of a Jellyfish

You’re a Jellyfish! • Level O 9 10 1. 2. Many animals avoid eating you and This shrimp will make a your cousins . After all, who wants a tasty meal. mouthful of stinging cells? But some animals don’t seem to mind at all . Sea turtles and some fish and birds think 3. of jellyfish as a real treat . You try hard to protect yourself from being eaten by hiding or by stinging . Still, many of your cousins are eaten while they are still growing or as adults .

Hunter and Hunted Do You Like other jellyfish, you like Know? to eat fish, crabs, shrimp, and One kind of jellyfish tiny marine animals . The grows its own key to successful hunting food. The upside-down is the stinging cells in your jellyfish lies on tentacles . You catch prey as the bottom of it floats through the water . shallow warm oceans. It eats Some of your cousins also algae and then have a glow that attracts fish . grows more Others have a sticky gel that just by sitting in the sunlight. catches animals passing by . Jellyfish are the main food of leatherback sea turtles.

You’re a Jellyfish! • Level O 11 12 Australian sea wasp Jellyfish Stings Symptoms: • Intense stinging pain • Red rash • Swollen, raised patches of skin • Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea • Fever, chills, and sweating • Back and abdominal pain Treatment: Do You Know? • Rinse with seawater (not fresh water). A jellyfish called the Australian sea wasp is one of the most poisonous animals in the world. A sting can kill • Don’t rub the wound or apply ice. a person in three minutes. • Apply white vinegar to the wound. • Remove tentacles using gloves, a heavy cloth, or tweezers. People and Jellyfish • Stay as still as possible to keep the poison from spreading. People often see your jellyfish cousins • See a doctor right away in case of on beaches . Sadly, those jellies are either breathing problems, severe pain, or other dead or dying . People need to remember intense symptoms. to never touch a jellyfish! Even a dead jelly can sting .

Most of your jellyfish cousins have a mild sting that is painful and causes a red rash . But the sting of some jellies can be deadly .

You’re a Jellyfish! • Level O 13 14 Glossary bask (v.) to rest and soak up sunlight (p . 9) budding (n.) reproducing by growing a bud that breaks off (p . 10) cloned (v.) duplicated (p . 10) currents (n.) steady-moving water that flows in a single direction (p . 4) invertebrate (n.) a kind of animal without a backbone (p . 4)

Big Red, discovered in 2003, has oral arms but no tentacles. marine (adj.) found in the ocean (p . 11) medusas (n.) adult jellyfish (p . 10) Conclusion planula (n.) the larva of a jellyfish (p . 10) polyp (n.) a tentacled, tubelike creature Scientists learn new facts about jellyfish attached to a solid surface; a stage every year . They also often discover in the life cycle of a jellyfish (p . 10) new kinds of jellies . In 2003, a large social (adj.) friendly; enjoying the company red jellyfish that has no tentacles was of others (p . 9) discovered off the coast of California . tentacles (n.) thin limbs on an animal, especially an invertebrate (p . 4) People enjoy looking at jellyfish at zoos Index or aquariums . Watching you gently float through water is fun and relaxing . Australian sea wasp, 13 moon jellyfish, 9 bell, 4, 6 oral arms, 6, 15 Even without brains, your cousins must Big Red, 15 stinging cells, 11, 12 be pretty smart to have survived for jellyfish stings, 13, 14 tentacles, 6, 7, 11, 14, 15 millions of years! lion’s mane jellyfish, 7 upside-down jellyfish, 11

You’re a Jellyfish! • Level O 15 16