Biology Information

Information Exchange

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Organisms are trying to send us the “go away” type of message

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Example: poison arrow frog (Ecuador). They produce this coloration because they have skin that produces a toxin. And so if you were to eat a poison arrow frog and let's say you were a bird. You're going to associate that toxin with that color. And it's going to tell you to stay away.

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Flamboyant cuttlefish is the same way. It produces a neurotoxin. And it produces not only this coloration but it also can raise the musculature on it and create these really wild looking pictures.

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Signaling

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Example: bees within a colony. Bees travel to find nectar and once they do so there's actually a chemical switch in their brain and they associate the time of the day, location of the flower and where it is.

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The bee must then alert others in its colony where the flower is so that they may work more efficiently by quickly locating where the flower is to then move in.

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Bees use the sun to determine the “angle of the flower” and thus the position of the sun tells them the time of day.

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Waggle Dance - If you look at a colony of bees it may seem chaotic, but if you look even closer you'll start to see that certain bees are doing this waggle dance. And so what they'll do is they'll waggle their body back and forth. This dance consists of the bee movie back forth and then in a figure eight. This dance tells the other bees two things:

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The angle at which they dance tells them the angle to the flower.

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The distance to the flower is signalled by the number of waggles (which is converted into “bee distance” )

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Example: Wolves in Yellowstone Park

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Wolves were once reintroduced to Yellowstone. They are extremely territorial animals and will kill any other animal that trespasses on their territory.

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Ways wolves