Can Sponges “Think” Using Light?
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- Опубліковано 4 лип 2023
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Sponges might not look like particularly complex animals, but they've had billions of years to evolve their own special systems. And one of those systems might involve sending messages through their body in the form of light.
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They can at least think well enough in order to make Krabby Patties.
That's a cool idea of an made up alien species. One with a nervous system made up of fiber optics which are super fast. That would be a cool writing prompt
Tell chat gpt about it
An alien based on a sea invertebrate, that also communicates with light waves across its massive body?
So, the Scub Coral from Eureka Seven?
@@DragonlordVindithe what now?
So use it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Reminds me of the Eridians from Project Hail Mary - they don't talk about it in the book but Weir had a document floating around explaining that an Eridian brain is basically fiber optic
there's a video by 'the octopus lady' about how sponges constantly rearrange their internal structure, so on a microscopic level they are complicated, so they have plenty to think about in terms of for example optimising those structure's locations for particular conditions ,ocean currents etc
I’ve had dreams where I could shapeshifter, I did it by moving cells and tissues around, I remember wishing I could set states and turn into specific shapes like a switch, didn’t happen though. I get lots of dreams about either shapeshifting, being incorporeal, or not human, sometimes being stuck in someone else’s body.
I guess my point is is having to think about where to move your cells sounds mentally exhausting
The crazy thing about a light-based nervous system is that you can theoretically pack a lot more complexity into a small space than with an electrical one. Two light rays can pass through each other without interfering, so you can have multiple light "wires" facing different directions through the same space, while wires would have to navigate around each other.
You can still have destructive interference tho
@@alejotassile6441op is using interference to mean the solutions are linear, so when they pass through each other, there is no interaction, even if they are interfering. Which they are not, because that requires coherence ….which they probably don’t have
@@DrDeuteronso constructive interference won't apply here, then?
@@anonymousstacker2044 the two signals will add together regardless of amplitude or phase and pass through each other, like light does everyday….say two people on adjacent walls of a room looking across to their opposite wall. They light each sees passes through the same point at the same time in the middle of the room with absolutely zero effect. Interference in when two signals add together with the same frequency and phase difference, so a persistent pattern forms
Wouldn’t this depend upon the wavelengths created by the bioluminescence? Most such light in the ocean tends to be blue. I suspect that this is due to how light interacts with water. Perhaps under different gravity, these interactions are different?
Also, suppose that, instead of water, life develops in oceans of methane? These frozen worlds tend to be farther from the star, and have less light in the environment. Bioluminescence might be critical to the development of animal life in such an ecosystem.
There are very interesting possibilities here.
Wonder if it evolved before the electrical nervous system. They were billions of years ahead of us in terms of optical computing.
Exactly! We are a "knockoff," not them ;)
To be fair, sponges are only known to have existed for around 800 million years, though the first well-preserved fossil sponges (based on what I've read) seem to be only around 580 million years old. And it is likely that the electrical central nervous system we're familiar with evolved prior to the Cambrian Explosion over 540 million years ago, since most of the animals that existed at that time already had it.
It would be cool if we could figure out from the ancient fossil sponges that they had this "optical" nervous system all the way back then!
The book series The Three Body Problem includes a species that thinks visually with light/em-radiation, and also uses that to communicate. They developed a computer system where each individual person works as a logic gate.
@@eabradley1108Hmmm, wonder how well that computer would work if it’s logic gates have psychiatric issues or illnesses? 🤔 I mean, how well can a logic gate operate if it isn’t actually using logic? 🤓 Mental health issues are very well known for the lack of logic and rational reasoning which occurs in people with such afflictions. Sure wouldn’t want my pc acting up and giving me gibberish results because some of its logic gates are now irrational gates instead. 😱😳
@@veraruda4174who the hell said otherwise 🙄
Humans: ahah, I invested fiber optics.
Nature: *discovered
this is very mind-blowing
science fiction can rarely match science when it comes to pure awe
Wait, but since sponges are so old, aren't *our* nervous systems the knock-offs?
i get what ur saying but i see it as they got the ps2 and we got a ps5 yk
Not necessarily. Sponge-like organisms could have evolved this "fiber optics nerve-system" both before or after creatures with real nerves having first appeared.
This looks like Ego's seed from GOTG Vol 2
@@andredepadua8799 yeah, but before seems way more probable to me.
@@andredepadua8799 Considering that only one species that we know has it, it's more likely that it evolved relatively recently. In geological time, of course.
So Spongebob isn't dumb, he just thinks differently. That tracks 😆
I suspect Squidward would say that with him, the lights aren't all on upstairs ;P
Using light to "think" is a bright idea.
This is dad joke material.... LoL
😯So-Oh Bright 🌞
Isn’t reddit back open now?
@@SnarkNSassshouldn’t that be oh-so bright? Or Oh, so bright. ;)
Badum tsss… 🥁
"How much deeper would the ocean be if there were no sponges?"
-Prof Emeritus Steven Wright
I know it's a joke but if we get technical the ocean would be shallower without sponges because of displacement
"Groups of cells packed together that preform different functions." You just described organs.
Haha, I guess biologists are a bit elitist when it comes to the 2d-ness of tissues or organs
They aren't described as organs because sponges don't have true tissues--partially because they do not have basement membranes!
It's a definition thing. They have like three different layers of cells but they're not counted as tissue
You're wrong and right tbh lol
Organs have distinct boundaries that allow them to be physically independent of each other... Your stomach and your liver are both right next to each other, serve a common system (digestive), and are completely and readily separated from each other.
The structure within the sponge is more like the brain (only less the thinking part lol) - groups of cells that are all "the same" but doing different things depending where they are located within the brain, and these areas are not succinct and cannot be separated from each other as modular units the way the liver and stomach can.
Wouldn't our nervous system be the knock off since sponges came first?😮😂😊
Ok yeah way too many mentions of this. Someone is confused.
Had to share this one! Off Topic: Those are some seriously dang cool earrings!!
Been many years since I’ve read any Asimov, but doesn’t the positronic brain in his robots/foundation universe use light instead of nerves/chemeichal-electrical impulses? I thought that was how he explained it’s extreme speed and power…..
Tat tvam asimov.
They use positrons (anti-electrons).
@@such_a_dork Oh, duh. It's even in the name... Like I said, it's been a couple decades since I've read any Asimov.
Guess it's time for me to fix that, haha.
Their reaction time must be incredible
I remember hearing part of a conversation, back when I was a young teen about how certain things in the deep ocean may have come from silicon.
That was the last I heard of it, and I stopped brining what I heard up, decades ago.
After awhile, I figured I must have confused something that I didn’t understand. I guess I did, however, I probably heard some college kids talking about, or just me not understanding what I had heard, what was a lifetime ago.
This was likely the root of my “Silicon based life” story, from all that time ago… It was never about deep sea critters evolving from silicone but, maybe a passing conversation about deep sea sponges using it to do something.
This, I think, happened around 02, or 03 so the timeframe seems to work. I do feel like an old, confused, childhood memory just got an answer after all these years.
Mind. Blown. Again.
Well that's very cool. I've always loved the glass sponges.
I read the the title and couldn't help but think of the Family Guy reference, "coming up next: can bees think?? a new study confirms that... no they cannot." 😂
Fascinating!
This is so fascinating! I wonder if an ecosystem on an exoplanet might refine this into a “nervous system” that works for more complex, multicellular animals.
In a different video, sponges were shown to be constantly rearranging their cells to adapt to conditions changing in the environment. Do these spicules also move around?
Sponges are so interesting whenever I see them and learn more about them, especially the sponge sea Cucumber
That is just so amazing. Life is such a curious oddity of beauty.
Oh haven't seen a SciShow in forever
They think at lightspeed, rationalize that nothing matters and sponge out.
Yay Rose!
Lacey Skeleton is a great band name
Enlightened SpongeBob should be a meme. 😂
Theres a Channel called The Octopus Lady(?) who has a lot of videos like these, specific looks at different ocean creatures.
that rates a WOW!!!
That's cool
They have to think some so they know when to flip the crabby Patties
What about placozoans? They're also animals without a nervous system but, unlike sponges, they also need to move around to look for food
Awesome
0:30 did them so dirty
Wow. Cool.
This is still a theory but I'm already mind blown
Using light to think w no brilliant sponsor is a dropped ball
DIYEHAHAHAHA!! GOOD ONE, SQUIDWARD!
If they use light to think…how would they react to light being shined on them ? Like from when the deep sea probe is using a flash light to look at them, were they like 🤯
wow. sponges are aware, in a sense
So sponges, polar bears, and finally man.
SpongeBob should have been our first clue 😂
it reaches out
So does that make this a literal “lightbulb” moment? 🤔💡
Love it when Rose hosts!
Aren't we all? We process light and make decisions based on it.
Living the dream
Can’t take a sponge lightly anymore (Cue Spongebob)
That never really... *dramatic pause*
Me: Oh lawd, it's coming...
...took off.
🤦
Just wanted to hit the 👍🏼
And commenting for the UA-cam gods😉
Any readers of the "Expanse" book series: "Nope nope nope nope!"
Anyone else have a crazy urge to bite one of those sponges?
Could foliage like trees and plants potentially have started out similar to a sponge and "picked up" an ancestor to algae or lichen creating the chloroplast?
I don't think so because the first plants and their ancestors would have been unicellular
@@josequiles7430 I'm thinking the photosynthetic unicellular bacterium being "picked up" would in a sense create the first plants.
I really wish you would also present why this is in fact not plausible, because most people will repeat this story as fact,, when in reality it's proposed in one old paper and probably not true.
So if I point a 30,000 lumen flashlight at the sponge will it have a seizure
Either that, or it'll figure out how to unify quantum and relativistic physics, something that is beyond our best thinkers.
what does it mean to think? maybe we are just sponges with a big ego?
I think I still prefer the notion that we're just stomachs that grew a brain that then decided we needed limbs lol
Your suggestion is a close second though
I am not sure that metabolism requires kicking.
Stimuli can be pleasurable, or merely molecular, and, though kicking may appeal to the abusive, teaching the organism to pre-emptively move away, or like myself, spew toxins in response.
Sponges having better internet prerequisites than germany 😂
Our brains are regularly wired while, their brains using optical fiber that’s wild
Aliens!
This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge, he wishes to think!
But Spongebob taught me they think with smaller sponges
Humans use to do super important things these days like share memes on the internet 😂
Imagine your nervous system shattering every time you fell or someone bumped into you. Yikes.
If you've ever stubbed your toe, you don't have to imagine 😂
@@shrimpbisque Fair point
Sponges have been evolving for 800mln years, no wonder they developed fiber optics 😄
The deep ocean isn't 100% free of photons, right?
This is just a theory at this point.
So you could say this is an early silica based lifeform? There are so many science fiction and fantasy stories out there that explore that possibility!
They are just as carbon-based as we are, as in their DNA and cellular structures are carbon-based
they're carbon based, just like us, you don't say humans are calcium based just because of the bones.
OMG it’s the crystalline entity RUN!
You know, the more I learn about sponges, the more I think evolving past them was a mistake. :-)
As Dougla Adams wrote in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans.
You think it would be practical for a animal to have a fiber optic based nervous system?
Wow
👍
sponge: we telightpath.
Our thoughts aren’t our own.
They’re legit downloads through the Aether and that’s light.
What are you talking about lol
Is that why I have a total of 42 sponges?
In terms of age we humans are the aliens. 😂😂
interesting
Lights from an ROV probably really mess with them.
Holographic brains? That sounds like a great sci-fi story
We need more species like this, maybe.
Fiber optic sponges
Thank you for calming down the voice! Much easier to listen to!
If sponges use light to process their environment and to react to it, it makes the choking out of our reefs by glitters even more grim 😢
You might have missed the idea that they are *producing* the light they are using. This changes things. Kinda like you being able to turn on your phone's flashlight in the dark. Doesn't matter that the sun isn't up.
So, is it a silicon based life?
no
A lump of rock can react to light. See photodiode / led
So, they have "eyes"?
I have a strange theory about what we typically call primitive organisms. It goes along the lines of they evolved first, so were capable of occupying niches where they didn't need a lot of complexity to survive. As evolution progressed these niches became filled. That forced later organisms to develop more complex forms just to survive. Kind of reverses the thinking that the more complex forms are "superior" to the more "primitive" life forms. Just a different way of looking at the same picture.
Fibre optic nervous system? Sounds like something an android would have...
is it a knock-off if it came first?
02:35 to 02:39 "Human do super important thing these days, LIKE SHARE MEMES on the Internet. Do you mean like other channels uses their thumbnails to make a personalised video image meme to their least minority group targeted audience to arouse provocative attention memory trigger of their private interactive environmental behaviour?
You make it sound like all sponges would do this, and reinforce that impression by showing images of many different kinds of sponges. But obviously this would only apply to those sponges that have silica as their basic structures. That would be a definite minority.
In French, sponge is éponge
interesting ☕
😍😍😍😍
life on our planet is amazing and we are doing a best to destroy it all...