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.
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