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No bigger than fingernail, the Caribbean box jellyfish hosts a complex visual system of 24 eyes that allows them to recognise obstacles while navigating mangrove habitats.
Even without a central brain, jellyfish can learn from past experiences like humans, mice, and flies, scientists report for the first time on September 22 in the journal Current Biology. They trained Caribbean box jellyfish (Tripedalia cystophora) to learn to spot and dodge obstacles. The study challenges previous notions that advanced learning requires a centralized brain and sheds light on the evolutionary roots of learning and memory.
Because box jellyfish are so distantly related to other animals, the research findings could hint at how the ability to learn first evolved.
It turns out that, even though they have no brains, they can learn and form memories.
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.