标签 水母 下的文章

海月水母和一群无刺的黄金水母，印度尼西亚 Moon jelly and an aggregation of stingless golden jellyfish in a landlocked marine lake, Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia (© Alex Mustard/Minden Pictures)

World Jellyfish Day

Today we're celebrating World Jellyfish Day—even though these creatures are best described as otherworldly. Despite their alien qualities (not to mention their inability to vocalize), jellyfish have a lot to say to us about the history of life on Earth.

For example, species like the moon jelly and smaller golden jellies in our picture possess primitive eyes that only detect the presence of light, like the nourishing sunbeams they're chasing here. But some of their cousins, like the box jellyfish, boast several complex eyes with corneas and retinas. These differences help biologists understand how the human eye evolved to process such dazzling spectacles as the jellyfish's delicate dance.

世界水母日

今天我们要庆祝世界水母日，尽管这些生物被形容为超凡脱俗的。尽管水母有着异族的特质（更不用说它们不会发声），但它们对地球上的生命史有着很多的看法。

例如，在我们的照片中，像月亮果冻和较小的金色果冻这样的物种拥有原始的眼睛，它们只能探测到光线的存在，就像它们在这里追逐的滋养阳光一样。但是他们的一些表亲，比如盒子水母，拥有几只复杂的眼睛，有角膜和视网膜。这些差异有助于生物学家了解人类眼睛是如何进化来处理水母微妙的舞蹈等令人眼花缭乱的景象的。