A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in
the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition …

The ability to perform muscle contractions is one of the most important and distinctive
features of eumetazoans. As the sister group to bilaterians, cnidarians (sea anemones …

Animals sense light primarily by an opsin-based photopigment present in a photoreceptor
cell. Cnidaria are arguably the most basal phylum containing a well-developed visual …

We argue that cognitive functions are not reducible to biological functionality. Since only
neural animals can develop complex forms of agency, we assume that genuinely cognitive …

A billion-year history of movement, from bacteria to Olympic athletes.'Packed with
revelations, scholarly but clear, Restless Creatures carries you from the kinetics of the …

Recent analyses have estimated that between 700,000 and 1,000,000 species of organisms
(excluding viruses and bacteria) live in the marine environment, with around two-third of …

The radially symmetric body of starfish has major implications on their nervous system
including eyes and vision. All the up to 50 arms are structurally identical, and most examined …

Box jellyfish respond to visual stimuli by changing the dynamics and frequency of bell
contractions. In this study, we determined how the contrast and the dimming time of a simple …

The rapidly expanding field of biomimetics emulates biological principles, distilled through
evolutionary time, to solve problems in technology, medicine and material science …

Most, if not all, rhythmic behaviors in animals are driven by sets of neurons called central
pattern generators (CPGs) that autonomically produce rhythmic activity patterns. CPGs have …