Box Jellyfish — The Eyes Have It
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| Wikimedia Commons / Guido Gautsch |
Evolutionary paradigms assume that the box jellyfish (one species is called sea wasp because of its nasty sting) is a "simple" organism. But like so many other things, the more science advances, the more intricate scientists realize that some things are. Using typical circular reasoning based on assumptions, evolution happened, the jellyfish is one of the first creatures to evolve eyes, therefore we can find out what eyes were like back then.
Wouldn't the eyes have evolved? The jellyfish is virtually unchanged in "millions of years". One argument of convenience for evolutionists is the contradiction that evolution is a necessity of life, but if something is unchanged, then it did not need to evolve. With "reasoning" like this, they should not wonder that so many of us question evolution. The eyes of the box jellyfish are complex and unchanged? No surprise for creationists.
Humans do well with two eyes. The jellyfish has more. Scientists are surprised at what they can do.
Scientists have known for over a century that box jellyfish (also known as cubozoans, after their cubic shape) have a unique array of eyes. They have 24 in total, of four different types.
Eight eyes resemble those of vertebrates (i.e. creatures with a backbone, e.g. humans), featuring “a sophisticated lens, retina, iris and cornea, all in an eye only 0.1 millimetres across”. But the specifics of function and performance hadn’t been explored—it was known only that its eyes gave the box jellyfish sufficient vision to respond to light and shadows, and to steer away from obstacles. (Box jellyfish do not just ‘drift’ along and eat whatever their tentacles ensnare; rather they are active predators, swimming towards objects of interest and avoiding others.)
Thus box jellyfish presented something of a riddle to evolutionists who acknowledged, “it has been a puzzle why they need such a complex set of eyes”, i.e. if the jellyfish only needed to discern light from dark. At the same time, their evolutionary paradigm held that “jellyfish belong to one of the first groups of animals to evolve eyes (the phylum Cnidaria)” and therefore “understanding how their eyes operate will show scientists what eyes were like early in evolutionary time.”You can finish looking at "Box Jellyfish Eyes Surprise Scientists". But be careful of those stinging tentacles.