It is often said that humans are the only animals that stumble. twice with the same stone. But this is more of a philosophical statement than a physiological one, since we are one of the few species that can learn from our mistakes. Like rats or flies, when we find a stationary obstacle causing us to stumble, next time we will be careful not to bump into it. Traditionally, this has been associated with species with complex nervous systems. However, it has now been discovered that such simple animals as jellyfish They can do it too.
This was observed by a group of scientists from University of Copenhagenthe results of which have just been published in Current biology. In their study they demonstrate how Caribbean box jellyfish (Tripedalia cystophora) is able to remember obstacles and avoid them in a fairly short time.
This is a species accustomed to living in mangrove swamps, the bottom of which is filled with underwater tree roots. If they encounter them, they can quickly lose potential prey, so they need to learn to avoid them. It’s amazing how they manage to do this, so scientists wanted to analyze this mechanism. Because to understand something complex, you must first start with its simplest version. And jellyfish seem to be one of the easiest forms of learning to learn.
Teaching Jellyfish to Learn
To train the jellyfish, scientists used a tank with grids of different shades of gray, which would mimic the roots they avoid in nature. The darker stripes will be perceived as nearby roots in the darkness at the bottom of the swamps, and the lighter ones as something further away.
Thus, after being introduced into the tank, they repeatedly collided with each other. However, 7.5 minutes Later they learned to avoid the darkest ones.
How do they do it?
Once it is proven that jellyfish can learn avoid obstacles, these scientists wanted to know how they do it. They suspected that this must be related to ropalios. These are sensory structures in the form of small tentacles that mainly contain two smaller structures. On the one hand, there is a vesicle called a statocyst, which provides them with spatial orientation. And on the other hand, a photoreceptor known as the ocellus, which gives them an idea of the depth they are at based on the intensity of the light reaching them.
In this particular species of jellyfish, the rhopalia also contain six eyes and are released from the inside. electrical signals which help them process the information coming to them.
So the study authors set about manipulating these electrical signals. As soon as the already trained jellyfish began to avoid dark stripes, they began to artificially generate weak electrical impulse in the rhopalia, as they approached the lighter bars. Thus, over time, the jellyfish did not simply avoid dark obstacles. They did the same with glades, although, naturally, they didn’t do it.
This indicates that the key lies in these most basic sensory structures and the electrical signals they emit. Once this is discovered, they want to investigate further to determine the cause. cellular interactions which are involved in jellyfish memory processing.
Thus, once they understand these mechanisms in a simple way, they can continue to climb until they unravel the more complex ones. And when we find them on the beach, jellyfish become very hated animals, but the truth is that scientists love them because you can learn a lot from them. Now you have another reason to love them.
Source: Hiper Textual
