| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
 |
|
| Grant wrote: | | Where did you get this? |
Memory.
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| DPCrisp wrote: | | Have they worked out the mechanism for that? |
No.
Perhaps in light of our xenothropological research it does seem obvious.
How about the question I asked?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishtar
|
|
|
|
Hello,
| Ishmael wrote: | | Is it plausible that the chemicals in the secretion are some means of communication, from life-form to life-form? Indeed, from life form to community? Is it perhaps even likely so? |
It must be important because it creates a desire to consume it. Whatever the information is, it seems that it's important for everyone to know since everyone is addicted to it.
But it's not clear what effect the toxins have on the other members. What is the response in the apes when they eat the stuff? For communication you need both the message and the receptor that reacts to the message.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Ishtar wrote: | | But it's not clear what effect the toxins have on the other members. What is the response in the apes when they eat the stuff? For communication you need both the message and the receptor that reacts to the message. |
Well. It just so happens that a team has come back from the field with a fresh report.
They have been watching the apes for months now and they have observed that in every case, most of those who licked the face of a secreting ape also began to secrete from their pores as well!
However, it is unclear if, in every case, the secondary secretions followed as an apparent effect. Sometimes, it seems the secondary secretions began immediately after the traumatized ape began to secrete. Cause and effect are a little muddled but the phenomenon does at least echo stimulus and response.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Ishmael wrote: | When a forest is infected with a disease, the infected trees will release a chemical signal into the air warning their comrades of what is coming. Though the infected trees die, the others turn on certain dormant defence mechanisms that inhibit the growth of the disease.
|
I wondered about this. I was driving through BC and Alberta a few weeks ago and there were entire swaths of mountainside that are rust coloured because of the mountain pine beetle.
In Banff the sky was all hazy because they were trying to do controlled burns to stop the progress of the beetle.
The pine beetle epidemic has been described here as "devastating". But the pine beetle is supposedly a native creature. So either the epidemic is normal and not devastating, or the pine beetle is not native.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Rocky wrote: | | The pine beetle epidemic has been described here as "devastating". But the pine beetle is supposedly a native creature. So either the epidemic is normal and not devastating, or the pine beetle is not native. |
Forest fires are natural and native as well -- yet they too are described as devastating. But this is from a human perspective. Our forests are now our gardens and we protect them beyond what nature intended (it is said by some that there are more trees in North America now than there were at the time of Columbus). In fact, we have learned that proper forest management often requires controlled burns. Perhaps even disease has its purpose.
Plagues of locusts no doubt continue to periodically sweep parts of Africa, yet the vegetation survives.
I wish us to discuss not the purposes to which plants put communication, merely to note that plants use chemicals to speak to one another. Just as do bacteria.
So when we discover a life form that has a tricky little mechanism for propagating chemicals from one organism throughout an entire community, ought we to at least suspect that the same thing is going on?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Chad
In: Ramsbottom
|
|
|
|
|
Have enough samples been analysed yet to ascertain whether or not the secretions always contain the same cocktail of chemicals in the same proportions, or do different stimuli produce subtle differences in the composition?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Chad wrote: | | Have enough samples been analysed yet to ascertain whether or not the secretions always contain the same cocktail of chemicals in the same proportions, or do different stimuli produce subtle differences in the composition? |
Nope. We don't know that yet. Before us, no one paid much attention to these secretions. Certainly no one imagined their content could be critical to understanding the phenomenon.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
What we do know is this.
Most every other form of life we have looked at, on this planet and on our home world, appears to use chemicals to communicate. There are a few forms of life on both worlds, these apes included, for which we have yet to find good evidence indicating chemical communication. The primary difference appears to rest on the presence or absence of air-born chemical signals: We've detected them in association with almost every species; we don't detect airborne chemicals in association with these creatures and a small number of others.
But if almost everything communicates bio-chemically, is there really good reason to think these few creatures should be any exception?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishtar
|
|
|
|
| Ishmael wrote: | | The primary difference appears to rest on the presence or absence of air-born chemical signals: We've detected them in association with almost every species; we don't detect airborne chemicals in association with these creatures and a small number of others. |
If they are not communicating through air-borne chemicals they could be communicating through the chemicals they eat or touch.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
So the planet on which we have been conducting our xenothropological research has a name.
Its name is Earth.
Anyone care to identify the species we have been studying?
Oh. One small detail was changed.
The facial secretion.
It isn't sweet.
It's salty.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishtar
|
|
|
|
| Ishmael wrote: | The facial secretion.
It isn't sweet.
It's salty. |
Tears?
I didn't think there was anything in them except water and salt.
On searching in Google it seems there is a difference in composition between emotionally produced tears and tears from irritants. wow.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
Is there anything about tears that fails to match the description I have given?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishtar
|
|
|
|
| Ishmael wrote: | | Is there anything about tears that fails to match the description I have given? |
Well.. Tears aren't exactly toxic.. or also not really addictive.. too much salt is not good for you though.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Ishtar wrote: | | Well.. Tears aren't exactly toxic.. or also not really addictive.. too much salt is not good for you though. |
Tears are toxic. Look it up.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
