About Caribbean box jellyfish:
- These are barely a centimeter long and have no brain.
- It belongs to the Cnidaria phylum. (the animal group which includes jellyfish, sea anemones and coral).
- The Caribbean box jellyfish, or Tripedalia cystophora is known to be able to navigate through murky water and a maze of submerged mangrove roots.
- These gelatinous, fingernail-sized creatures are capable of learning from visual cues to avoid swimming into obstacles.
- It has a cognitive ability which is never seen before in animals with such a primitive nervous system.
- Their performance is called "associative learning" is comparable to far more advanced animals such as fruit flies or mice
- They have four visual sensory centres called rhopalia, each of which has lens-shaped eyes and around a thousand neurons which help in avoiding harm.
- They can respond to "operant conditioning” i.e they can be trained to "predict a future problem and try to avoid it."
