Just saw that they have 32 brains and curious why something so small needs so many brains.
In: 43
They don’t, because they do not really have a brain. They have a bunch of nerve nodes (little masses of nerves). But a brain is really only a node of nerves, a complicated one for sure, and the center of a big network. Animals with small networks and primitive brains are really just a bunch of local nodes that aren’t true brains. We call them “brains” but they really aren’t what most people think of as a brain. They are more than just isolated nerves, but less than a central brain.
The nervous systems of animals is a spectrum, from basically nothing but a few local masses of nerves serving a tiny part of the nervous system, to one big mass serving the entire system, and different levels of complexity in between. Animals with “good” brains still have those simple nodes in the outer reaches of the nervous system. There is just a much larger and more central “brain”. “primitive” animals do not have a central brain. just nodes. haven’t evolved to the point of a central brain.
Kind of the same idea with “hearts”. Things like worms have many “hearts” but they are not true hearts. More like muscular arteries.
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