Glowing Blob’s Nervous System May Have a Separate Origin Story

A glowing blob drifting through the ocean has a nervous system unlike any other known animal's. Its neurons don't communicate across the familiar junctions called synapses. Instead, some are fused together into one continuous network.

That would be strange enough. But ctenophores, or comb jellies, may belong to the earliest branch of the animal family tree. If so, their bizarre wiring raises an extraordinary possibility: nervous systems may have evolved independently more than once.

Comb jellies are not jellyfish. They're the largest animals known to swim using cilia, tiny hairlike extensions, and they catch prey with sticky cells called colloblasts rather than venom. Their lineage split from other animals roughly 700 million years ago.

Using volume electron microscopy, researchers recently mapped the aboral organ, a sensory structure that helps comb jellies detect light, pressure and gravity. They identified 17 cell types there, including 11 previously unknown ones, integrated with that continuous network of fused neurons.

And the weirdness keeps stacking up. Some ctenophores can reverse from adulthood back toward a larval stage. Deep-sea species use unusual fats in their cell membranes to survive crushing pressure. Their genomes may preserve clues to the origins of bioluminescence and complex animal development.

Seven hundred million years later, the blob still refuses to be simple.

Read the full story at Quanta Magazine, September 16, 2026

Hot Take: At some point science may need to stop asking what’s unusual about comb jellies and start asking whether anything about them is normal.