Deadly Jellyfish can 'Sense' the Color Red - It Scares Them!

Wow, this is wacky. Apparently, Box Jellys, one of nature's most poisonous animals, are afraid of the color red. In tests, the jellyfish turned around and swam in the opposite direction when confronted with cardboard tubes painted red. Other colors don't seem to affect them in the same way.

www.news.com.au...

This could save a whole lot of lives, if people put aside fashion sense and wear red bottoms.

The sensor equipment of the brain is not separate from the external sensors in this case, it functions as its own 'eye' right?

Wouldn't it stand to reason that other creatures share this?

Wouldn't it also stand to reason that this would explain the 'third eye' and related skills, abilities, and perceptions? This just got me thinking for some reason.

Deer and elk, for example, can see near infra red just above the wavelength of human vision (near infra red, not thermal).

Healthy actively growing plants have a high reflectivity in NIR, and NIR photography and satellite imagery is used to determine crop health. It is surmised the animals use NIR to browse the most nutritious plants and avoid the lesser.

Birds can see into the UV, it's believed to help them with identification of otherwise apparently indistinctive plumage (i.e. as we'd see it).

This page has more on that.

Seeing into IR or UV may well account for the stories of animals 'seeing beyond the veil' if we accept that veil to be the thin band of the EM spectrum between 400nm and 700 nm that we can see.

For cows it's a very aggressive color and studies have shown it's also the same for humans.
Bright colors such as the poison arrow frog (who is red) alert predators that they are poisonous. Could be the same for jelly fish perhaps it's a warning color alerting them to danger of another species.

Originally posted by DDay
For cows it's a very aggressive color and studies have shown it's also the same for humans.
Bright colors such as the poison arrow frog (who is red) alert predators that they are poisonous. Could be the same for jelly fish perhaps it's a warning color alerting them to danger of another species.

Uh... Ain't COWs, colour blind?

What I don't understand: jellyfish don't have eyes, so how can they see colors?

Maybe they have light-sensitive cells on their skin... but my impression was that light-sensitive cells are really only good for detecting a difference between light and dark transitions.

So the RNLI have known all along? Darn lifeguardingjellydodging gits.

Dont mean it, those guys and gals do a dam fine job.

[edit on 15-8-2005 by Zanzibar]

This is a fscinating topic. Jelly fish dont have eyes.

I suppose their nervous systems react to the color somehow, the way their tentacles react when touched. Very interesting, nature is always amazing me.

All I know is that sometimes when I look at 'black' crows, especially when they stretch their wings in the sunlight, I have seen green, blue and purple colors and patterns. Different patterns on different birds.

The color red usually means danger, poison! in the animal kingdow, so the response isn't that surprising. I'm no fan of brightly colored snakes, and I too try and go another direction!

I wonder if the jelly fish if somehow has the ability to detect the color red from chemical composition in the water. And perhaps it "learned" the color and associate the color with a red tide. If they are like some inverdibrates, their knowledge is passed on through genetics. So they would be born knowing that red was a bad thing to be near. It raises some questions on how a jellyfish works

-Aza

Red isn't an "alert/warning" color for all animals. What about red on certain flowers or fruit?

maybe the can sense different kinds of light theres white light all colors darkness no light and roygbiv all the colors of light

reply to post by onlyinmydreams


Jellyfish do have eyes, just google the subject.