Lion's Mane Jellyfishes and Elementary's The Geek Interpreter

Summary: Lion's mane jellyfishes become self-defensive means, motives, opportunities and perpetrators in Elementary's The Geek Interpreter Sept. 3, 2018.

lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata); Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008: Derek Keats from Johannesburg, South Africa, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

Lion's mane jellyfishes act as premeditated or reactive manslaughterers or murderers with instinctive or intentional offensive or self-defensive weapons in the Elementary procedural drama series episode The Geek Interpreter Sept. 3, 2018.

Director Christine Moore and writers Robert Doherty, Tamara Jaron and Kelly Wheeler begin the sixth season's 19th televised episode with two cases from the book series. The 139th episode overall culls The Adventure of the Lion's Mane and The Greek Interpreter by Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (May 22, 1859-July 7, 1930). Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) dates the 1926 case of Fitzroy McPherson, not to the first story's beach, but to a Brooklyn-transposed apartment in Sheepshead Bay.

Sherlock explains the first and second Brooklyn-rebooted cases through respective evidence in a welt-marked back and in spilled kiwi-flavored energy drinks and a Red Hook property.

Sherlock familiarizes Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) with the facts that "the police thought he'd been beaten to death because of the welts on his [McPherson's] back."

Going over police photos and Sheepshead Bay beach contexts with Athena (Alia Attalah) guides Sherlock to welt-generating "marks of a lion's mane jellyfish," not beating deaths. Lion's mane jellyfishes have nematocysts (from the Greek νῆμα, nēma, "thread," and κύστις, kústis, "anatomical sac"), whose neurotoxin-filled stings herald blisters, cramps and, rarely, allergic shock. Sherlock indicates to Joan that "lion's mane stings aren't typically fatal" since stinging is defensive against intruders and predators, protective of symbionts and stunning for prey.

One-year lion's mane jellyfish life cycles juggle fertilized eggs; pelagic (free-swimming) larvae; benthic (sea-bottom) polyps asexually producing free-swimming ephyrae; and free-swimming medusas sexually producing subsequent generations.

Lion's mane jellyfishes, known commonly as giant jellyfishes and hair jellies and scientifically as Cyanea capillata ("blue [and] hairy"), keep high-profile presences from April through September.

Lion's mane jellyfishes line one balance organ between, and 70 to 150 hair-like, hollow, thin tentacles beneath, each of eight lobes along swimming bell (body) edges. The central mouth on the 19.69- to 78-74-plus-inch (50- to 200-plus-centimeter) diameter bell maintains four broad, folded, frilled, nematocyst-studded, red or red-brown, short tentacle-like oral arms. Lion's mane jellyfishes, noted scientifically in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778), need up through 98.42- to 121.39-foot- (30- to 37-meter-) long tentacles.

Lighter orange or tan colors, shorter tentacles and smaller bell sizes occur on lion's mane jellyfishes farther south than on their crimson to purple northern counterparts.

Protection-seeking butterfish, harvestfish, medusafish, prowfish and shrimp and prey-seeking ocean sunfish, sea turtles and seabirds respectively pursue lion's mane jellyfishes as same-destination symbionts and for predation.

Lion's mane jellyfishes queue up, through 65.62-foot (2-meter) depths, like nets over such prey as comb jellies, crustaceans, moon jellies, smaller fishes and jellyfishes and zooplankton. The Cyaneidae (from the Greek κυάνεος, kuáneos, "blue-colored") true jellyfish family members range through Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Ocean and Baltic, Irish and North Sea waters. They sustain distribution ranges between latitudes 70 and 42 degrees North, in water temperatures between 30.49 and 74.84 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 0.841 and 23.8 degrees Celsius).

Death by not so toxic-tentacled lion's mane jellyfishes tends to be improbable and unlikely, except for weak-hearted people like Fitzroy McPherson, Sherlock's cold case from 1926.

Math graduate student Lily Zavala (Isabel Arraiza) details her kidnapping to Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), Captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) and Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) in Elementary tv series' The Geek Interpreter (season 6 episode 19): CBS Elementary promotional photo, via Spoiler TV Sept. 2, 2018

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata); Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008: Derek Keats from Johannesburg, South Africa, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lion's_mane_jellyfish,_or_hair_jelly,_Cyanea_capillata,_the_largest_know_jellyfish_in_Newfoundland,_Canada._(21390221575).jpg;
Derek Keats (Derek Keats), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/dkeats/21390221575/

Math graduate student Lily Zavala (Isabel Arraiza) details her kidnapping to Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), Captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) and Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) in Elementary tv series' The Geek Interpreter (season 6 episode 19): CBS Elementary promotional photo, via Spoiler TV Sept. 2, 2018, @ https://www.spoilertv.com/2018/08/elementary-episode-619-geek-interpreter.html

For further information:

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. London, England: George Newnes Ltd., 1892.

"The Geek Interpreter." Elementary: The Sixth Season. Los Angeles CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sept. 3, 2018.

Linnæi, Caroli. 1758. "5. Medusa capillata." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 660. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/727573

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