{"id":225307,"date":"2025-11-18T01:19:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T07:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/shock-discovery-reveals-sea-urchins-are-basically-all-brain"},"modified":"2025-11-18T01:19:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T07:19:15","slug":"shock-discovery-reveals-sea-urchins-are-basically-all-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/shock-discovery-reveals-sea-urchins-are-basically-all-brain","title":{"rendered":"Shock Discovery Reveals Sea Urchins Are Basically \u2018All Brain\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/shock-discovery-reveals-sea-urchins-are-basically-all-brain.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sea urchins may just look like a ball of spikes waiting to be stepped on at the tide pool, but there\u2019s much more to these barbed beasts than just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/sharks-go-absolutely-wild-for-sea-urchins-new-footage-reveals\">roe<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/this-creature-hides-a-mouthful-of-teeth-and-it-likes-to-keep-them-nice-and-sharp\">teeth<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>New research reveals sea urchin nervous systems are far more complex than we knew. These creatures, it turns out, possess \u2018all-body brains\u2019 and, at least in their genetic layout, they are remarkably similar to our own.<\/p>\n<p>A team of scientists led by developmental biologist Periklis Paganos from Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Italy made the discovery while investigating metamorphosis in purple sea urchins (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paracentrotus_lividus\"><em>Paracentrotus lividus<\/em><\/a>), which transform from free-swimming, planktonic larvae to the mature, spine-encrusted form we\u2019re more familiar with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sea urchins may just look like a ball of spikes waiting to be stepped on at the tide pool, but there\u2019s much more to these barbed beasts than just roe and teeth. New research reveals sea urchin nervous systems are far more complex than we knew. These creatures, it turns out, possess \u2018all-body brains\u2019 and, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}