Jellyfish With Human-like Eyes

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valich

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Unlike normal jellyfish, box jellyfish are active swimmers that can rapidly make 180-degree turns and deftly dart between objects. Scientists suspect that box jellyfish are so agile because one set of their 24 eyes detects objects that get in their way. The eyes are located on cup-like structures that hang from their cube-shaped bodies. They have four different types of special-purpose eyes. The most primitive set detects only light levels, but one set of eyes is more sophisticated and can detect the color and size of objects. One of these eyes is located on the top of the cup-like structure, the other on the bottom, which provides the jellyfish with an extreme fish-eye view, so it’s watching almost the entire underwater world. To test if these eyes helped the jellyfish avoid obstacles, they put the jellyfish in a flow chamber and inserted different objects to see if the jellyfish could avoid them. While the jellyfish could avoid objects of different colors and shapes, transparent objects proved more difficult. They respond to the see-through ones. Because jellyfish belong to one of the first groups of animals to evolve eyes (the phylum Cnidaria), understanding how their eyes operate will show what eyes were like early in evolutionary time. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17913669
 
Hey! Have to add a catchy title, else how you gonna attract the masses' attention? Basic journalism. Still, there are some very interesting similarities in visual perception here to take note of.

Cheers to the onslaught mate. I think we'd have some great discussions over a night out in Scandinavia roaming around a bit while debated mutually points of interest, aye?
 
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similarities only in that they are able to sense shape and color. In other words, similar enough that we call the structures 'eyes'. If those similarities weren't there, we'd call them 'ears' or 'arms' or 'protuberance'.


"cup-like structures". So they are photo-sensing materials with an open bowl-shaped structure around them? No lenses, no eye "ball", etc?
 
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I was really surprised to find out that they have the same similarities of sensing shape and color - especially shape. To me, this is a quantum leap from being mere chemoreceptors to being closer to human eye sight. After all, aren't there some partially blind humans that can only do the same?
 
You're talking as if human eyesight was something particulary advanced.
Besides eyes have evolved independently many times.
 
Yes, I think human eyesight is more advanced than just being chemoreceptors in that we can make out dimensional spacial patterns. Granted, other species have much keener eyesight than humans.
 
Bacteriorhodopsin, halobacteria use it for a form of photosynthesis(non-cholorphyll). It is purple pigmented and is constructed very similarly to human eyes! Some other bacteria use bacteriorhodopsin, but I dont know any others.

This explains the purple color in NaCl mines(like those right by SFO)
 
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