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- Scientists have managed to train a jellyfish to recognize and avoid obstacles
- The study challenges previous views that learning in this way requires a brain
As stinging mindless blobs, many may assume that jellyfish are a world apart from humans.
But scientists now suggest that these wiggly creatures are more like us than we initially thought, thanks to their incredible ability to learn from past experiences.
The Caribbean box jellyfish is no bigger than a fingernail and houses a complex visual system of 24 eyes that allows them to recognize obstacles while navigating through mangrove habitats.
The groundbreaking discovery, unveiled by the University of Copenhagen, challenges previous views that centralized brains are a must for animals to process complex thoughts.
‘It’s surprising how quickly these animals learn; it is about the same rate as advanced animals do,” says Associate Professor Anders Garm.
Scientists claim they have managed to train a jellyfish to recognize and avoid obstacles
‘Even the simplest nervous system appears to be capable of sophisticated learning, and this could turn out to be an extremely fundamental cellular mechanism, invented at the dawn of nervous system evolution.’
Caribbean box jellyfish – or Tripedalia cystophora – are small creatures that thrive in warm, tropical waters.
Although the sting of many types of jellyfish is fatal to humans, the Caribbean variety will only cause pain for a few days.
As part of the latest research, published in Current biologyexperts tried to investigate whether the jellyfish could undergo ‘associative learning’.
This refers to the process in which organisms form mental connections and sensory stimulations.
In humans, for example, this could mean that hot stoves are dangerous and painful to touch.
To put this to the test with a jellyfish, scientists decorated a circular tank with gray and white stripes to simulate its natural habitat.
In this case, the gray stripes mimicked ‘far away’ mangrove roots from the jellyfish’s perspective.
Initially, scientists witnessed the fish bumping into these ‘distant stripes’ quite often, but this seemed to change after a period of 7.5 minutes.
Caribbean box jellyfish – or Tripedalia cystophora – are small creatures that thrive in warm tropical waters
The jellyfish study challenges previous views that complex learning requires brains
As part of the latest research, published in Current Biology, experts sought to investigate whether the jellyfish could undergo ‘associative learning’
By then, the fish had increased its average distance from the wall by about 50 percent and its contact with the wall had decreased by half.
Scientists think this is due to the type of visual sensory centers called ‘rhopalia’.
Each of these unusual structures controls the jellyfish’s pulsating movement, which increases in frequency as it avoids obstacles.
In light of this, the team now hopes to delve deeper into the mind of a jellyfish and further understand its ability to form memories.
‘If you want to understand complex structures, it is always good to start as simple as possible,’ added Professor Garm.
‘If we look at these relatively simple nervous systems in jellyfish, we have a much better chance of understanding all the details and how they come together to produce behaviour.’