Scientists discovered in jellyfish the ability to study – research
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German scientists tried to teach jellyfish a few simple tricks to see if a brain is necessary for learning. The findings suggest that almost anything with a small number of neurons and the ability to sense the environment can adapt its behavior based on previous experience, reports Science alert. “Learning is the highest performance for the nervous system,” says the study’s first author Jan Biletsky, a neuroscientist at Kiel University in Germany. To determine whether the jellyfish could learn, Biletsky and his colleagues placed them in a circular tank with gray, striped walls to mimic the vertical stripes of a distant mangrove forest (evergreen plants that grow in the tropics and in the equatorial belt). Can jellyfish learn? Seeing the “vegetation”, the jellyfish first hit the wall. Their enthusiasm soon faded: by the end of the 7.5-minute test, the jellyfish had rotated four times as often on average and doubled the distance between themselves and the wall. This reflected altered behavior in response to a newly encountered obstacle. “It’s amazing how quickly these animals learn, about the same as advanced animals. Even the simplest nervous system seems to be capable of advanced learning, and this may turn out to be an extremely fundamental cellular mechanism invented at the dawn of the evolution of the nervous system,” says the marine Anders Harm, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen. To confirm that this learning event involved visual and mechanical stimuli, the researchers isolated individual jellyfish and showed them videos of low-contrast gray bars in motion. Interpreting the stripes as objects too far away, the jellyfish did nothing. When the video was accompanied by a weak jolt of current, the jellyfish began to move to “dodge” the oncoming obstacle. T. Cystophora jellyfish, with which research was conducted, have about a thousand photoreceptors. These nerves serve as both sensory systems and integration centers for converting stimuli into responses, helping the jellyfish navigate through dense forests of mangrove roots in search of prey. Read also: The oldest species of jellyfish was discovered in Canada – it is over 500 million years old
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