Pages

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Da-Dum...Da-Dum....Da-Dum Da-Dum Da-Dum!

In my new adventure of living by the motto: everything is energy and the body is the interface, I learned something unexpected today while visiting a Microbiology lab--sharks have a sixth sense. They have small (is anything small on a shark?), pore-shaped canals that pepper their snouts and heads enabling them to detect electricity. All living creatures create their own electric fields, and fish are no exception (Inner Constellation Truth No. 1--Everything is energy....). When fish swim or slightly move, for instance, breathing through their gills, a change is created in the surrounding electric field. Sharks, by virtue of the hundreds of electrically sensitive, gel filled canals in their heads, detect this shift. How cool is that?

Imagine experiencing a shark's sensory world. Brandon Brown from University of San Francisco wished to do just that and extracted gel from sharks' snouts (died naturally, of course). He found that the gel behaves similar to a thermostat, detecting the slightest temperature changes given off by prey and translating them into electrical signals. Perhaps shark should be the IC mascot--they are a supreme example of, "Everything is energy, and the body is the interface."

Did you feel that? Da-Dum...Da-Dum...Da-Dum Da-Dum Da-Dum!

No comments:

Post a Comment