The Island of the Colorblind

The jellyfish in the lake are members of the genus Mastigias, a jellyfish commonly found in the Palau Lagoon whose powerful stinging tentacles are used for protection and for capturing planktonic prey. It is believed that the ancestors of these Mastigias jellyfish became trapped in the lake millions of years ago when volcanic forces uplifted Palau’s submerged reefs, transforming deep pockets in the reefs into landlocked saltwater lakes. Because there was little food and few predators in the lake, their long, clublike tentacles gradually evolved into stubby appendages unable to sting, and the jellyfish came to rely on the symbiotic algae living within their tissues for nutrients. The algae capture energy from the sun and transform it into food for the jellyfish. In turn, the jellyfish swim near the surface during the day to ensure that the algae receive enough sunlight for photosynthesis to occur…Every morning the school of jellyfish, estimated at more than 1.6 million, migrates across the lake to the opposite shore, each jellyfish rotating counter-clockwise so that the algae on all sides of its bell receive equal sunlight. In the afternoon the jellyfish turn and swim back across the lake. At night they descend to the lake’s middle layer, where they absorb the nitrogen that fertilizes their algae.

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‘I had been lying on a sunny bank,’ Darwin wrote of his travels in Australia, ‘reflecting on the strange character of the animals of this country as compared to the rest of the World.’ He was thinking here of marsupials as opposed to placental animals; they were so different, he felt, that

…an unbeliever in everything beyond his own reason might exclaim, ‘Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work.’

Then his attention was caught by a giant ant-lion in its conical pitfall, flicking up jets of sand, making little avalanches, so that small ants slid into its pit, exactly like ant-lions he had seen in Europe:

Would any two workmen ever hit on so beautiful, so simple, and yet so artificial a contrivance? It cannot be thought so. The one hand has surely worked throughout the universe.

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Frances Futterman also describes her vision in very positive terms: