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How can an animal coordinate its body without a brain?

A jellyfish can fold part of its body to bring food toward its mouth without having a centralized brain like ours. In Clytia hemisphaerica, researchers watched neural activity alongside feeding movements to investigate how that coordination works. A distributed nervous system can still have organization. “No brain” does not mean no nerves, no structure, or no control.

3–7 min

Questions you could explore

  • What could changing patterns of neural activity reveal that a still image of the nervous system cannot?

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