CNN —Caribbean box jellyfish, animals that may appear to float through life aimlessly and don’t have a central brain, still have the ability to learn rapidly and retain information, new research has found. Caribbean box jellyfish, also known by the scientific name Tripedalia cystophora, have 24 eyes — six in each of four visual sensory centers called rhopalia. How jellyfish learnTo test the animals’ ability to learn, the researchers lined the inside of a round tank with gray and white stripes. The gray stripes would appear to the jellyfish’s 24 eyes as dark as a faraway mangrove root does in their natural habitat. “The scientists devised a very convincing experimental paradigm to quantify associative learning in this box jellyfish.

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Persons: Anders Garm, “ We’ve, ”, Jan Bielecki, Bielecki, ” Bielecki, “, Michael Abrams, Abrams, ” Abrams Organizations: CNN, University of Copenhagen, Denmark —, Physiology, Kiel University, University of California, California Institute of Technology Locations: Denmark, Germany, Kiel, Caribbean, Berkeley