Sponges Can Sneeze, May Have New Sensory Organ
Sponge, in repose The freshwater sponge Ephydatia muelleri, used in the study. Glen Elliott and Sally Leys I don't know if you were aware, but sponges sneeze. That's a surprise, since sneezes result when nerve cells sense the presence of some sort of irritating, foreign particle. But sponges, one of the earliest evolving animals, aren't thought to possess a single sensory cell. That appears to be wrong. "The sponge doesn't have a nervous system, so how can it respond to the environment with a sneeze the way another animal that does have a nervous system can?" asks Danielle Ludeman, a doctoral student in evolutionary biology at the University of Alberta, an co-author of a study describing the sponge-sneezes. The answer, researchers suggest, is that sponges likely do have sensory cells, detecting irritants and drugs...