This article examines the evolving biological knowledge of jellyfish within the haicuo (海錯) genre, an early modern Chinese taxonomic tradition of marine life. By situating haicuo in a global historical context, it challenges the dominant Eurocentric historiography of biological classification and problematizes the assumption that Chinese taxonomy was unscientific or underdeveloped in comparison to European systematics. The study explores how haicuo's conceptual framework—marked by fluidity, hybridity, and empirical flexibility—contrasts with the rigid, hierarchical order of Linnaean classification. Unlike charismatic marine animals such as whales or dolphins, jellyfish occupy an ambivalent space in both biological inquiry and cultural imagination. As marine invertebrates, they defy conventional categories of animal classification while also resisting human-centered narratives of affection, utility, and conservation. By analyzing historical records, illustrations, and textual descriptions in haicuo treatises, this article highlights how pre-modern Chinese thinkers and artists engaged with marine diversity through an alternative logic of classification, one attuned to multispecies entanglements and the dynamic nature of oceanic life. In doing so, it reframes multispecies history as a pluralistic enterprise, encouraging a reassessment of non-Western contributions to biological knowledge and expanding the historical interpretation of the natural world.
