There’s a New Portuguese Man O’ War Species Named After a Samurai Warrior

In the cold waters off northeast Japan, a group of students found a Portuguese man o’ war. It shouldn’t have been there. It doesn’t make any sense why it would be there. It turned out to be an entirely new species, now named the Physalia Mikazuki, or the “crescent helmet man o’ war,” after the samurai lord Date Masamune, who famously had a massive crescent moon shape adorning his helmet.

The discovery was detailed in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. One of the study’s authors, Yoshiki Ochiai, says the creature was discovered by accident while working around Sendai Bay. It’s a rare find, so of course, he did what any esteemed scientific researcher would do: he scooped it into a Ziploc bag and delivered it to the lab via scooter.

It was there that his fellow researchers figured out