Picture of Giant Lion's Mane Jellyfish - Facts

Story:

The Lions Mane Jellyfish is the largest jellyfish in the world. They have been swimming in arctic waters since before the dinosaurs (over 650 million years ago) and are among some of the oldest surviving species in the world.

The largest can come in at about 6 meters and has tentacles over 50 meters long. Pretty amazing when you think these things have been swimming around for so long.

Other Versions

This is a Super Jellyfish!

Analysis:

This picture of what is claimed to be a Giant Lion’s Mane Jellyfish shown beside a diver has been doing rounds since many years, and most people believed it to be fact. Not really!

The stories that come with this picture call it a Super Jellyfish and the largest species of their kind in the world that are living since the dinosaurs existed over 650 million years ago. The message also states that the largest Lions Mane Jellyfish can be about 6 meters in size, with the tentacles over 50 meters long. However, the largest recorded lion’s mane jellyfish had a diameter of 7 feet 6 inches (2.29 m) and its tentacles 120 feet (37 m) long. The specimen was found washed up on the shore of Massachusetts Bay in 1870, and had a bell like body as shown in the below picture.

Picture of Lion’s mane jellyfish — Lion’s mane jellyfish

Coming to the authenticity of the picture in question, the zoomed-in view of the diver does show some traces of photo manipulating. This picture is in fact circulating since 2004, the oldest available source appears to be here – and it has a promotional link. Moreover, the picture is hosted on FotoTime.com, which is a photo and video sharing platform along with photo management software to edit photos. All this concludes to saying that the diver was in fact super imposed onto the picture of the jelly fish – to create an attention grabbing picture and then promote the website.

About Picture of Giant Lion's Mane Jellyfish — Picture of Giant Lion’s Mane Jellyfish

So this picture of Super Jellyfish, called as the giant and largest jellyfish in the world is a hoax! Lion’s Mane Jellyfish are in fact largest known species of jellyfish on Earth, but not as big as shown in the picture.