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DURHAM, N.C. -- We humans are fixated on big brains as a proxy for smarts. But headless animals called brittle stars have no brains at all and still manage to learn through experience, new research ...

As mist lingers over a Swedish fjord lined with towering, forested cliffs, a group of scientists collect mud from the bottom of the turquoise-colored waters. They’re after brittle stars—marine animals ...

The paper J. Delroisse et al., “A puzzling homology: A brittle star using a putative cnidarian-type luciferase for bioluminescence,” Open Biology, 7:160300, 2017. Degrees of separation Although the ...

(CN) — Paleontologists in Luxembourg recently identified a new species of brittle star — a sea-dwelling echinoderm similar in appearance to the starfish — that thrived during the Cretaceous period.

A brittle star. Photo by the Florida Museum of Natural History Invertebrate Zoology. Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert!