Sea creatures that can learn without a brain!
Recommended for Preparatory Grades
Every living thing possesses the characteristic of learning. This includes birds and sea anemones. Now sea anemones are animals that live in the ocean. They have long, colourful tentacles that they use to catch food.
Further, they don’t have a brain as we do, but they can learn and remember things!
A type of learning is called associative learning.
Important Details
- Firstly, starlet sea anemones have shown an ability to remember the connection between light and electric pulses.
- This is surprising because sea anemones and jellyfish only have a decentralized nerve net, not a brain.
- Secondly, classical conditioning experiments were conducted on starlet sea anemones.
- In the experiments, light pulses were paired with an electric shock.
- Animals that received light and electric shock together adapted their behaviour.
- In addition to reacting to light alone after conditioning.
- In the experiments, light pulses were paired with an electric shock.
- Thirdly, software was used to track the animals’ body length.
- Further, the team also measured the extent of the retractions.
- The scientists found that when the animals were trained with light and shock together, their reaction was different from those that were not trained that way.
- They found that the animals that were trained with light and shock together pulled their tentacles back more than the other animals.
- Further, the team also measured the extent of the retractions.
- This ability of sea anemones to learn is an example of “embodied cognition.”
- Importantly it prompts research into the structure of memory in organisms that do not have a typical brain.
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Watch a video
The Youtube Channel “Deep Marine Scenes” shares facts about Sea Anemones.
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