I suspect that all animal cells think and have experiences. But neural cells are specialized.
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2025
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Depends on your definition of thinking. If by think you mean react to their environment and possibly have some form of chemically based memory, that seems possible. Hell they have to react to the environment to maintain homeostasis. Multicellular organisms are ultimately a kind of colony of unicellular organisms if you get right down to it.
If you mean actual cognition, definitely not. There's an indisputable difference between reacting to stimulus and considering the cause of the stimulus and the second one needs a neutral network or something like it, it's simply too complex... Probably.
I also don't think it's unreasonable that an organ could affect thought patterns aka personalities, but there's a big, big difference between your brain's specific chemical environment they are affecting and the memories it contains.
The evidence of the mechanism of anesthetics on microtubules preventing consciousness makes me suspect that actual honest to god consciousness is phenomenon that arises from fundamentally intra-cellular, not inter-cellular mechanisms; that no more than a single cell is required to have a form of experience. Which is a potential I hate, but it's the most consistent model I have.
This is such a shit magazine. They are not "all brain", its more like their brain is just scattered evenly throughout their body.
its called a nerve net for the most part. they dont have an actual brain per ce. thier nervous system is somewhat more complex than cnidarians.
So, when I see chefs open one up and eat it raw, they're eating living brains?
Metal.
They are eating the roe. So genitals, eggs, and sperm.
mmm... brainitalia...
Kinky
And it's delicious with a quail egg dropped on top. Yummo!
These guys always made me feel uncomfortable. I would collect and eat them, and the remains would run away afterward.
Er...I...um...what‽
It’s true! I would collect them in a pail from the tidal pools as a child. I would crack them open with whatever I had available and eat them, and the halves would still be running around on the ground after I discarded the rest.
The parts of urchin, the remains, they would skitter around and bunch up in one corner of the yard trying to get away like they didn’t realize they’d been eaten yet even though there was nothing left inside.
I have....so many questions...
Could you do me a favor? Since you know what you're looking for, will you see if you can find any videos of this? I looked, but either my keywords are bad, or there just aren't any. I'm assuming it's bad keywords. That's absolutely wild.
I tried. This isn't a very good video, but you can kinda see it's still trying to crawl away after it's been eaten at several points. I might have had 20 or so in a pile fresh out of the water and they were much more active. I hope this helps.
I like the fat ones. The long ones don't taste good.
I am deeply, deeply disturbed by this. Thank you for sharing!
Most unnerving meal I've ever heard of
I, for one, would like to see the cafeteria menus in advance so parents can adjust their dinner menus accordingly. I don't like the idea of my children having two all-body brain meals in one day.
Fedi-urchin
So they are basically an intellect devourer with spines?
Urchins are like the God-emperor in Dune, understood.
Oh, so just like me.