An Alligator's Sixth Sense

Devil's BSD writes "NPR has this article about how alligators sense their prey. Apparently, those black dots on a alligator are really "dome pressure receptors", which alligators use to detect changes in water pressure caused by ripples in the water. The alligator then does some fancy triangulation, and can then detect precisely where its prey is."

Comments

Sixth Sense?

[alnapp]

I see Handbags, all the time

Not Hogwash

[crow]

It's not hogwash at all. Sure, reptile brains may be simple in many ways, but that's not relevant. You don't have to be able to perform advanced trigonometry and calculus to figure out the trajectory of a thrown ball so that you can catch it. Instead, you get a sense for where the ball is going based on having seen balls thrown before.

Likewise, the alligator simply notices that certain patterns of pressure changes indicate that there is something in the water in a given direction.

Sure, you can describe what is going on with advanced mathematics, but the actual application is done with simple pattern matching.

Re:Boggled alligators

[Nos.]

The article I read a day or two ago (on CBC's website compared it to the human ear. Our ear works basically the same way as these sensors. When there's a lot of noise, it tends to be ignored, but you can still pick out differences. My guess would be that the first few drops may get the gator's attention, but after that it would become background "noise". However, an animal splashing around would proably make bigger waves, and thus be more noticeable.