Researchers have found that a type of predatory sea slug
that usually isn’t picky when it comes to what it eats has more complex
cognitive abilities than previously thought, allowing it to learn the warning
cues of dangerous prey and thereby avoid them in the future.
The research appears in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Pleurobranchaea californica is a deep-water species of sea
slug found off the west coast of the United States. It has a relatively simple
neural circuitry and set of behaviors. It is a generalist feeder, meaning, as
University of Illinois professor of molecular and integrative physiology and
leader of the study Rhanor Gillette put it, that members of this species “seem
to try anything once.”