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It's been a long time since I read this book; am I misremembering? I thought they had a butt, but their digestive tract was filled with interlocking pieces that
by jrootabega 4y ago
It's been a long time since I read this book; am I misremembering? I thought they had a butt, but their digestive tract was filled with interlocking pieces that unzipped in waves to let food through? If that was true, I'm not sure how nerve signals would get between their two halves. Perhaps their brains and minds were just good at being split in half every now and then. Maybe they had to sleep to digest. Maybe I'm forgetting that, too. It would also be unsettling to know that your gut was the only thing holding your body in one piece.
- Avshalom 4y agoas long as some number of teeth were always sufficiently closed you could just have parallel/redundant communication channels using the teeth and never entirely break contact.
- jrootabega 4y agoGood point; the higher level layers of the brain wouldn't even need to know that there was ever a disconnection. Although it would all still require neural connections that could be physically broken regularly. And we thought USB was picky...
- egypturnash 4y agoI distinctly recall a dinner scene where, after eating, everyone kind of hung out chatting for a bit, then used dedicated bowls to discretely hork up the undigested remnants. I seem to recall something about "zippers" at a cellular level? It's been a while and my copy is long gone.