A sea anemone's sting turns out to run on two different kinds of cells — a trick 600 million years old

Sea anemones sting with one of nature's fastest weapons: a microscopic harpoon that fires in microseconds. Biologists assumed a single specialised cell did the whole job — build the harpoon, load the venom, pull the trigger. Research covered by The Scientist shows the starlet sea anemone splits the work: one cell type builds a stiff piercing shaft, a second builds a flexible thread that delivers venom from a separate gland cell. The division of labour, coordinated by a genetic switch, appears to date back more than 600 million years — and understanding it could help design better micro-injectors and make sense of stings across the whole jellyfish family.