Science can be cruel. On the one hand, it is important for researchers to learn as much as possible about the world around us. On the other, it seems that there must be some type of morality involved that would make it so they do not intentionally cause excessive harm.

That being said, scientists have found something incredible while studying a jellyfish that is commonly called a sea walnut.

They were collecting these jellyfish from the Western Atlantic Ocean. When they got back to the University of Chicago’s Marine Biology Lab, they placed them into saltwater tanks for study.

Shortly after, they noticed something odd about one of the jellyfish. It was significantly larger than the others. Even more unusual, it had two brains and two butts.

They theorized that when injured, these jellyfish may fuse together to become one organism in order to improve the chances of survival.

So, ethics aside, they took some of the smaller jellies and intentionally injured them, then placed them back in the tank in close proximity to each other.

The next day, they found that they had already fused together. In a statement on the research, they said:

“It turned out that, nine out of ten times, it worked. The injured individuals became one, surviving for at least 3 weeks.”

This process happened extremely fast as well. They went on to say:

“After a single night, the two original individuals seamlessly became one with no apparent separation between them. When the researchers poked at one lobe, the whole fused body reacted with a prominent startle response, suggesting that their nervous systems also were fully fused.”

The fusion seemed to be complete since their nervous systems were working together as one. Not only that, but their digestive systems merged. When the biologists fed one of the mouths a fluorescent-injected food, the waste came out both of the butts at different times. This indicates that the nutrients were shared across the two creatures that had fused together to become one.

More research is undoubtedly need on this, and it may even be useful in working on the possibility of helping humans to be able to regenerate lost limbs, organs, or other body parts in the future.

The research was published in the journal Current Biology.

This seems mean, but very interesting.

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