Patrick Star, the starfish from the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon, is famously stupid, but real-life scientific starfish may actually be smart.This is at least some conclusion groundbreaking recent papers A paper published in the journal Nature solves a lingering mystery about starfish anatomy by focusing on the enigmatic echinoderm’s genes. Echinoderms like starfish have five body plans, but strangely enough they still must have evolved from an ancestor with two body plans. Scientists analyzed the starfish’s genes and compared them to those of vertebrates such as humans (which have a double body shape) and acorn worms (which also have a double body shape, but are closely related to echinoderms). did.
What was their surprising discovery? As it turns out, starfish don’t switch on the gene that gives them a torso with an abdomen and limbs. Instead, their body plans develop from genes that acorn worms and vertebrates use to develop their heads.
“To summarize the anatomy of a starfish, we can say that a starfish is an almost head-like animal with five prongs, the mouth facing the ground and the anus facing upwards on the other side.” said study co-author Dr. Jeff Thompson. He studied at the University of Southampton told the Guardian.in Attached opinion statementThurston Lacari of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, describes the starfish as “a disembodied head roaming the ocean floor with a lip — the edge of a tube leg that incorporates the original function of sorting food particles. grows there and for walking.”
