The Intelligence Behind Jellyfish

Something To Think About The Intellegence Behind Jellyfish:

Because of the kind generosity of some colleagues here in Palau Kathy and I were privileged to an unforgettable afternoon trip.  We flew over one of the wonders of the world, the Rock Islands of Palau, to the site of a major World War 2 battle, Peleliu.  Again, and again, I and the other three passengers in the little plane asked, “How can you take it all in?”  The answer is, You can’t. One of the wonders we flew over is the “Jellyfish Lake.”  Actually the lake is one of several marine lakes in Palau, each inhabited by a unique strain of jellyfish.  This is the best known of the lakes because it is open to visitors.  Several years ago I was privileged to make the short hike over one of the ridges that separates the Jellyfish Lake from the lagoon, and slip into the quiet water and swim with the strange, beautiful creatures.  It’s not like you see one here or there; the delicate creatures totally surround you.  It’s like swimming in a giant bowl of soggy Cheerios. You can read more about this natural wonder here.  The symbiotic relationship of lake, jellyfish, algae-like creatures, sun, and water is utterly amazing.  The jellyfish derive nourishment from microscopic creatures that inhabit their gelatinous bodies.  To maximize the photo-synthesis of these creatures the jellyfish migrate back and forth across the lake on a daily basis.  They congregate on the sunny side of the shadows cast by the vegetation on the shore, thus avoiding the region where their prime enemy, a breed of anemone, lurks, looking for jelly for lunch.  I figure if you take all the intelligence in that lake and put it together you wouldn’t have enough smarts to learn to not look up in the rain and drown.  Yet, there it is, a precise, beautiful, delicate, complicated dance, repeated day after day, and it works.As we were flying I asked our pilot about the manufacture of the airplane.  He told me that they found it, gassed and ready to fly, on the downwind side of a junkyard after a typhoon had blown through. In case you didn’t catch that, that was a joke—a joke with a point. It’s STTA.