Important study at the University of Florida
June 18, 2010
Anyone who had watched the film "Jaws", particularly the first movie, for sure has been scared at the idea of falling in deep sea water. At least I was. I have a friend that felt horrified at the thought of flying because of the possibility of the plane falling and crashing into the ocean, and it wasn't because of the crash but of the fear of sharks. In that fantastic film the shark was a very smart creature, too smart I should say. Perhaps not at such high level as Jaws, but most of us believe sharks are mysterious creatures, with some kind of criminal intelligence. They are silent, large, powerful, and in some ways they act as if they can "think smartly to catch their preys". They are for sure fantastic creatures, very important in the role of maintaining the oceans ecosystem. Recently, a study reported online in the June edition of Current Biology, whose author was Jayne Gardiner, a marine biologist at the &#&University of Florida&#& in Tampa, provides a better notion of how these predators are able to successfully catch the distant preys. Gardiner's team showed that sharks take note of which nostril smells the odor first. If the smell was first sensed by the right nostril, the shark would turn to the right. It doesn't matter the concentration of the smell, as many scientists has supposed of importance before this study. Even if the smell hitting the second left nostril is 100 times stronger than the received first by the right nostril, the shark would continue moving in the direction determined by the first hitting of the smell, in this example, the right nostril. By this study researchers have found that sharks can detect small delays, no more than half a second long, and when they experience such a delay, they would turn toward whichever side picked up the scent first. What it means is that sharks pick up on a combination of factors, based on both odour and flow, to keep themselves oriented and ultimately be successful in catching the prey. This study has an important consequence in the construction of underwater odour-guided robots. Jayne Gardiner said that "With the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the main oil slick is easily visible and the primary sources were easy to find, but there could be other, smaller sources of leaks that have yet to be discovered. An odour-guided robot would be an asset for these types of situations." As I understand, hopefully, this may become a possible solution in preventing such ecologic disasters. |