How to Tame Your Lizard -- Part 2

I "sense" a tangent coming

That blue part makes thinking, planning, and awareness of self a thing!

Today’s post is full of lots of fun facts about turtles, sharks, bees, and most importantly us humans. I hope you enjoy it. It is part of a multi-post story. Click here if you want to see Part 1 first.

This multipart story is a bit complex and I am trying to take it one step at a time. I hope it continues to remain engaging as I think the point of it all is important (and timely).

When you observe the diversity of life on this planet, most creatures clearly can get along and satisfy their basic needs with a “lizard” brain. Clearly, there is more going on than just this lizard brain making all the amazing decisions creatures are able to make. Humans famously get along with our five base senses of sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. While we are clearly at the “top of the food chain” in this world, that doesn’t mean we have it all. We are clearly not the fastest, strongest, or frankly the best examples of even the five senses we possess. I find it fascinating that animals have evolved some important senses that we could never manage without the wonderful inventions science has brought to our lives. Here are some fun senses to consider that we managed to not develop over the years. I think you will agree that some of them are pretty amazing and might have really helped us back in the hunter-gatherer days. The point here, is we all need the inputs we get from our senses to survive in this complex world. ALL of these rather amazing senses are merely hard-wired functions in our primitive brains and frankly in the “brains” of beetles and the sort.

1. Magnetic Field Detectors — Submarines are an amazing innovation of humankind. They would never have been developed without an understanding of magnetism. It is quite remarkable that the turtle has a built-in magnetometer. I for one would admit that I am so glad there is a compass in my car. It has always been hard to know what direction I am going.

2. Electric Field Detectors — I am sure many of us let the time get away from us during Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. I have always been amazed at how quickly a shark, an amazing predator can redirect itself. One of their secrets is they have organs to sense electric fields. Pretty amazing. We managed to duplicate this in a multitude of ways in the last 200 years.

3. Nutrient Sensors — As I have aged, I have found the need to modify my diet. I make a concerted effort to try and get the right mix of foods for the vitamins and nutrients I need while trying to avoid certain things. Some birds, before they eat something can already sense the nutrients that are INSIDE. Wow, beats looking at a label. Nowadays, our best answer to this problem is food labels. There is definitely more work to be done.

4. External Taste Sensors — Now this is mouth-watering. Imagine having a justifiable reason to stick out your tongue before you eat. A catfish has so many taste buds with an amazing range they can externally sense what something is going to taste like before they eat it. I remember those boxes of mixed chocolates. How great it would have been to know what is inside before I commit to the one chocolate my Mom would offer. The humans clearly don’t need this. We have this wonderful way to remember things in the short and long term. That sounds a lot better than all of us hanging our tongues out all the time.

5. Implicit Magnetism — Have you ever wondered how bees go away from the hive even on a windy day and somehow manage to make it back home? I have read a bit about this and it is fascinating. One of their secrets is they have some mildly magnetic iron oxide in their bodies! Turns out that having a built-in compass helps when visibility is bad and it is a windy day and you just want to get back home. There are lots of practical examples of how embedding magnetic sensors in our daily lives have transformed them. Some of my favorites to learn about if you are interested are the use of magnetism to guide the surgery. Here is a great story about that topic if you are interested

6. Infrared Radiation Detectors — Some beetles can sense infrared radiation from 50 miles away. What is that for? Well, it turns out it helps when you want to figure out the place to go in a forest fire. Much better to go to the spot where the fire has stopped burning. Pretty amazing and by the way the beetles go to the burned-out area as a great spot to make more beetles. My Dad worked in a steel mill in my youth. I remember him telling the story of an unusual employee role. In the 1970s, a person dressed in an asbestos suit would climb a staircase adjacent to a pot of molten steel. He would insert a long temperature probe to figure out if it was time to pour the steel into molds. Wow, does that ever sound dangerous? Thankfully, nowadays we measure temperature by simply viewing the infrared spectrum of light. From that bit of information, we can figure out the temperature of things. No more asbestos suits.

7. Enhanced Vision — Seeing the world in color is definitely underrated. I remember in my early youth we had a black-and-white TV. That first colored TV was just amazing. Some animals and lots of birds can see a lot more colors than we do. I imagine this genetic advantage might land you a job at Sherwin-Williams. After a lot of research and development, modern computer vision is even better than the most advanced animal vision for identifying defects. That used to be a job for a “detail-oriented” person.

8. CO2 Detectors — All these years of wearing DEET when out in the woods and those pesky mosquitoes can still seem to find us. Mosquitoes have specialized antennae that can “smell” CO2. I guess that means they are going to be around for the foreseeable future. It is hard to imagine how many lives have been saved in our homes with gas detectors of all kinds. I am sure we all depend on CO detectors to keep us safe when the furnace just might not be working in tip-top conditions. Modern climate analysis has done the same in being able to assess CO2 levels throughout the atmosphere.

It is pretty easy to get down on all these cool senses that we lack. Fear not. All of these mutations and enhancements are necessary to gain an edge, especially if you are a honeybee. All of these senses are “cool” but they are, to a large extent, hard-wired functions. All of those senses do not provide the one very special enhancement that only a handful of animals have and are nowhere more prevalent than in us humans. We have these broad foreheads because we had to make room for what is a second brain. That frontal lobe is better than all these other special senses, better eyes, better ears, etcetera can EVER accomplish.

Alas, there is one challenge with this second, bigger, and better brain. While it is connected to the lizard in the back and is amazing at so many special things, it is A LOT SLOWER than the lizard. Perhaps 200 years ago or so, humans began using that frontal lobe and devised some ingenious ways to exploit the differences between that lizard brain and your frontal lobe in fellow humans. All of us animals are always looking for an advantage.

In Part 3 we will discuss the consequences of having two brains, one “better” than the other but alas, much “slower” than the other. I hope you are enjoying this story so far and will come back tomorrow.