NEW YORK: Jellyfish can sense the ocean current and actively swim against it, according to a study that involved tagging and tracking the creatures.
They may lack brains, bones, and even a heart, but jellyfish are undoubtedly some of the most interesting creatures marine biologists have come to research. Even in spite of their major deficits, and their obvious downfalls, jellyfish have an incredible talent for swimming. So much so that no other creature under the sea can quite compete in terms of efficiency and skills. Though their tactics have long been misunderstood, a new study adds to the working knowledge that these brainless creatures are far more clever than we give them credit for.
The new study published this week in the journal Current Biology reveals that while the little gelatinous creatures are quite efficient in traversing the waves, they can also detect the direction of ocean currents and effectively swim against them.
“Detecting ocean currents without fixed visual reference points is thought to be close to impossible and is not seen, for example, in lots of migrating vertebrates including birds and turtles,” co-author of the study and researcher with Deakin University in Australia, Graeme Hays says.
“Jellyfish are not just bags of jelly drifting passively in the oceans. They are incredibly advanced in their orientation abilities.”
Undulating their heads and forcing water out from beneath them, jellyfish move with power much akin to a water jet. And researchers believe now that depending on the flow of water, they can modify the speed of their undulations to move against the currents.
Hays’ team, along with the help of biologist Sabrina Fossette of the Swansea Lab for Animal Movement, developed a unique GPS device used to log the movements of free range barrel jellyfish. By tracking the group of migrating jellyfish, as well s a set of GPS-tracked floats used to record ambient ocean current activity, the researchers were able ultimately analyze the migratory and movement patterns as they pertained to the state of ocean’s currents.
