Imagine that you're researching on an 8-legged monstrosity capable of killing around 10 humans at once. The Octopus. Lucky for you, you've severed its ginormous arms from its central brain for further studies, you think that you're all set to go and proceed further... until an hour later you see its arms grasping to reach something.
As if a bulbous head, 3 hearts, 8 limbs, 500 million neurons, with most being venomous, having impeccable intelligence with cognitive control couldn't be enough to handle already! These astounding creatures have the ability to still transfer information all the way to their suckers even if their arms weren't attached to the central brain. Looks like there's more than one brain for this beauty.
This response to external stimuli exhibits the existence of clusters of nerve cells allowing their arms to respond by moving and reaching even if its arm were to completely detached for at least an hour! This proves that not all information passes through the central brain itself, but bypasses it in order to initiate motor responses. The ability for the arms to work independently of the brain showcases the beauty of evolution.
Those creatures who are less dominant of the central brain, use neural rings, which are an intrinsic structure of neuron codes arising from responses to stimuli by creating a receptive field and encode the data in these codes.
With the ability for the octopus alongside many other creatures to alter its RNA, it allows the octopus to adapt instantaneously to environmental changes. So, taking a step back and looking at how much we too have evolved tremendously, would it be selfish to think that we would remain the most intelligent species for eternity?
Hope you enjoyed this quick-read through! Check out this video for more!
Sources:
Comments