---
title: Comb jellies (Ctenophora)
scientific_name: Ctenophora
common_name: Comb jellies
rank: Phylum
published: 2026-08-10T14:14:16.611Z
updated: 2026-08-10T14:56:32.825Z
tags: Comb jellies, Ctenophora, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/comb-jellies
---

# Comb jellies (*Ctenophora*)

## Quick facts

- **Rank:** Phylum
- **Scientific name:** Ctenophora
- **Body shape:** Invertebrate - Not a fish - coral, mollusc, crustacean, echinoderm and other invertebrate groups.
- **Species listed here:** 1

## How to recognise this group

- rows of tiny beating combs that split a torch beam into running rainbows
- transparent body with no bell pulsing and no stinging cells
- two long trailing tentacles in most species
- some are flat and creep over corals instead of swimming

Comb jellies are not jellyfish and not even close relatives. They are their own phylum, and they swim by beating eight rows of fused hair-like plates, the combs that give them their name. A torch beam scattering off those moving combs breaks into a running band of colour, which is the easiest way to spot one at night.

They have no stinging cells at all. Instead most species trail two long tentacles studded with sticky cells that hold small prey the way flypaper does, and comb jellies are voracious hunters of plankton for their size. The body is largely water, and a specimen brought into a bucket usually falls apart.

A handful of species gave up swimming altogether. The creeping comb jellies flatten themselves and crawl over soft corals, sponges and sea urchins, so far from the usual jellyfish outline that they were long mistaken for flatworms. They are the ones divers in this sea are most likely to find, if they look closely at the surface of a leather coral.


## Species (1)

- [Creeping Comb Jelly (Coeloplana yulianicorum)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/comb-jellies/creeping-comb-jelly)

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/comb-jellies)*
*Updated: August 10, 2026*