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Sensory physiology

Brainless eyes

Nature volume 435, pages 157–159 (2005)Cite this article

The visual equipment of box jellyfish includes eight optically advanced eyes that operate with only a rudimentary nervous system. As they produce blurred images, their function remains an open question.

According to conventional wisdom, information-processing in visual systems is a hierarchical process1. It starts at the level of the receptor layer, the retina, where raw sensory data are taken up from the outside world, and continues by transferring this information to increasingly higher centres in the brain. During this upstream process, exactly those features are extracted from the retinal response patterns that enable the animal to cope successfully with its ecological world.

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Figure 1: Eye see — but what? A box jellyfish of the genus Chironex.

R. STEENE/IMAGEQUESTMARINE.COM

Figure 2: The rhopalium (sensory club) of a box jellyfish.

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  1. the Department of Zoology, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, Zurich, CH-8057, Switzerland

    Rüdiger Wehner

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  1. Rüdiger Wehner
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Wehner, R. Brainless eyes. Nature 435, 157–159 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/435157a

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