4 ms·
I haven't read the paper, but I assume the novelty here is the discovery of what happens when more than two of the hairs are triggered. The BBC Life series with
by chriskanan 11y ago
I haven't read the paper, but I assume the novelty here is the discovery of what happens when more than two of the hairs are triggered. The BBC Life series with David Attenborough talked about the counting/triggering mechanism years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7eQKSf0LmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7eQKSf0LmY
- gypsy_boots 11y agoYa I immediately thought of the same Life segment. Is there something new in this discovery that I'm not seeing? Maybe the fact that they can also tell how big the prey is and add digestive enzymes accordingly?
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoYes, that process you refer to apparently kicks in after 5 triggers which, I think, is a much more impressive feat of genuine counting. I'm now intrigued by its memory capacity and how that works.
- anotheryou 11y agoA simple threshold seems easy to me. You just fire some messenger and if the concentration is high enough (N counts of messenger emitting) it reacts. Something binds or disassembles the messenger so the system resets after some time. The details would still be interesting of course.