Surprising jellyfish finding challenges what's known about learning and memory

[Judi Lynn]

By Jenna Schnuer, CNN
Updated 6:58 PM EDT, Fri September 22, 2023



After years of working with the Caribbean box jellyfish, researchers were not shocked to find the creatures could learn but were surprised at how fast they did, one study author said.

CNN
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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.

This finding upends a long-held idea that organisms can’t engage in associative learning without a central nervous system, according to a study published Friday in the journal Current Biology.

The study — led by Anders Garm, an associate professor of marine biology at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark — is part of ongoing research on jellyfish behavior out of the Institute of Physiology at Kiel University in Germany.

“We’ve been looking into visual behavior and all kinds of experiments, and learning is just a natural progression,” said first author Jan Bielecki, a postdoctoral fellow in visual neuroethology at Kiel.

After years of working with the Caribbean box jellyfish, the team was not shocked to find the animals could learn, but “it was a surprise how fast” they learned, Bielecki said.

More:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/22/world/jellyfish-brain-central-nervous-system-learning-scn/index.html