- Joined
- Apr 20, 2025
- Messages
- 7,233
I have no interest in biology at all (in fact, I hated anatomy/physiology in high school) but I do find insects fascinating.
When I was a kid I saw a video of a horsefly getting its head ripped off by a wasp, and it was still moving around and trying to fly away. It turns out they're a lot more redundant than we are, the loss of a "brain" will eventually be fatal, but technically their reflexes/breathing/crude leg sensing abilities are still there. It's not like those dummyed babies that only have a brainstem (although some parts are similar), because they'll still "move" and be "active" even though they're essentially on autopilot. Apparently it's not uncommon for them to live for up to a week without a head, provided they're in a lab setting with some teeny-tiny IV providing nutrients (since the mouthparts, let alone urge to eat, are gone). The only reason you couldn't keep one alive forever is because of hormonal regulation - eventually, the kidneys and other functions will fail since there's no longer a brain telling them how to function. But they can get by for quite a while.
When I was a kid I saw a video of a horsefly getting its head ripped off by a wasp, and it was still moving around and trying to fly away. It turns out they're a lot more redundant than we are, the loss of a "brain" will eventually be fatal, but technically their reflexes/breathing/crude leg sensing abilities are still there. It's not like those dummyed babies that only have a brainstem (although some parts are similar), because they'll still "move" and be "active" even though they're essentially on autopilot. Apparently it's not uncommon for them to live for up to a week without a head, provided they're in a lab setting with some teeny-tiny IV providing nutrients (since the mouthparts, let alone urge to eat, are gone). The only reason you couldn't keep one alive forever is because of hormonal regulation - eventually, the kidneys and other functions will fail since there's no longer a brain telling them how to function. But they can get by for quite a while.
