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Alithographica β Science Fact Friday: Electroreception
#biology #fish #illustration #nature #physiology #science #scientific #scientificillustration #electroreception
Published: 2018-06-02 04:44:54 +0000 UTC; Views: 1396; Favourites: 66; Downloads: 10
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Description
Bees use electroreception in a particularly interesting way - they collect a static charge during flight. The charge disperses on the flower when they land, helping pollen to stick to the bee but also allowing other bees to see which flowers have been visited recently.
Also: Platypus are really, really weird.
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Comments: 23
I remember reading ( albeit in a pretty dated book ) that the electric attacks from electric eels, torpedo rays etc were a development of this
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Speaking of platypodes, they donβt have a stomach. Not kidding.
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...what
Out of all the obscenely weird things about them, THIS is one that truly leaves me baffled. Evolution what the heck.
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Yeah.
The thing is, you only need the stomach if you rely on pepsin to break up food, and platypodes do not. So the stomach became selected away because it was a waste of resources.
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w h a t
Do you know of any other animals that have selected against stomachs?
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I'll have to look into this more! Wild.
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Remarkable - particularly, for me, since it is a sense which we do not seem to have. For a creature which relied mostly on electroreception, I suppose we might seem "blind."
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Yep! This, different color cones, and magnetoreception are REALLY wild to me. They're all ways of detecting very real, informative phenomenon and we are totally "blind" to. We can develop all the VR/IR we want but it's not the same as truly sensing it.
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Indeed not. If what I read was right, even the 'extra' colors in ultraviolet we can see after our - lens? cornea? - is removed register as a pale blue. We're just not wired for that.
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I saw that recently too! Super weird. Lowkey wouldn't mind if I needed that surgery.
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Excellent - I learned a bunch of stuff on Science Fact Friday that I didn't know - thanks again!!
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Platypus or platypuses are the most common versions, though platypodes would also be correct. -i/-odes depends on whether the word has a Latin or Greek root.
(I did have to Google this to make sure before I posted though lmao)
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Ah! Thank you! 
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