Slimy and often sluggish they may be, but some molluscs deserve credit for their brains — which, it now appears, they managed to evolve independently, four times.
The mollusc family includes the most intelligent invertebrates on the planet: octopuses, squid and cuttlefish. Now, the latest and most sophisticated genetic analysis of their evolutionary history overturns our previous understanding of how they got so brainy.
The new findings expand a growing body of evidence that in very different groups of animals — molluscs and mammals, for instance — central nervous systems evolved not once, but several times, in parallel — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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