The Jellyfish Who Lost Hope (opens in new tab)

British soldiers attending a popular science lecture in the nineteenth century were shown creatures in a drop of pond water projected onto a screen from an instrument called a lantern microscope. The soldiers “looked on with intense interest” when a water flea became entangled in the stinging arms of a Hydra, and “made the most violent efforts to escape, turning over and over, amid excited murmurs from the soldiers.” When the water flea “hurled itself free . . . every man in the room sprang t...