I’m still here, and I do have more animal intelligence stories on deck. Unfortunately, this blog takes third place among my projects, so sometimes it languishes while I write about personal finance or about my daily life.
Just to tide you over, here’s a short video of “jellyfish all around”.
Naokiinoue, who posted this to YouTube, writes:
The jelly fish came to this lake in Palau through a tunnel which connected the sea and the lake long time ago. Now the tunnel have closed, and the jelly fish came to have no poison in an environment where there’s no predator. They live by photosynthesis because they cannot feed on anything in this lake. This lake is such a heaven to them that there are just so many of them living here.
Read more about “Jellyfish Lake” from Eric Cheng.
Cheng’s article is incredibly ignorant. I’m not sure why you posted this article, as it doesn’t seem to have much to do with animal intelligence. It does seem to push the idea of evolution, though.
Cheng says that the jellyfish have evolved so that they don’t need poison (even though they still have it, nice try) and don’t need to eat because the evolved photosynthesis. First of all, this is purely conjecture on his part because as I’m about to show, it’s a completely false assertion. Secondly, losing the ability to do something is not evolution, it’s adaptation.
As you can see here:
http://www.answers.com/topic/golden-jellyfish
These jelly fish exist elsewhere other than the lakes of Palau, including oceans. They still have photosynthesis. They are all the same species! This is not something they “evolved” by being in this lake. Secondly, these jellyfish exist in at least 3 different lakes in Palau. Of course, the blind say this is an example of “convergent evolution”, whereas anyone with eyes to see will realize this is evidence that no evolution has taken place (or at best, that it took place well before they were ever separated into these lakes). What a joke.
Oh, and the video of all those jellyfish is very pretty. :)
Jellyfish DO NOT photosynthesize. They feed on the nutrients that algaes produce as a product and please note that, THE ALGAES ARE NOT CONSUMED when intaking the nutrients from the product of the photosynthesis of the algae itself.