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Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

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Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#71

This is an odd form of cross species slavery. It’s one thing to agree to the conditions and another to force it upon life. This... has a lot to contemplate. Service dogs don’t agree but there is an essence of joy there. Can you feel a clams emotions? I guess at this point you get close to the contemplation of plant life. There’s one thing to kill life and use it for food and then another to use it as a test for poiso…

I thought that mussels and bivalves are like plants, there's no central nervous system and nothing else allowing them to be capable of consciousness.

They have a central nervous system, with three ganglia: http://www.manandmollusc.net/advanced_introduction/bivalve_n...

If you look carefully, it is very similar to the neural system in any bilateral https://www.britannica.com/science/nervous-system/Diffuse-ne... . It is twisted following the deformation of the body inside the shell. Compare it with https://entomology.unl.edu/charts/nervous.shtml

In our central nervous system one of the ganglia grow tooooooo much. Moreover, the olfactory part of it grow tooooooooooooooooooooooooo much.

Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#72
post #28
post #21

It's a pretty cheap sensor that can potentially detect all sorts of toxins in the water as a supplement to normal water quality analysis. You really can't expect any sort of reasonable sensor technologies to detect wide ranges of potentially harmful contaminants in water supplies while you can use mussels, clams, etc. as biological sensors--the modern "canary in a coal mine." I worked with a research project that was…

What kind of "feedback" do you get from the mussels in a polluted environment? Is it death or something more interesting?

So, slightly different but here's a nice video from Steve Mould about hepatitis being spread around the world by freshwater mussels, which were contaminated when storm drains overflowed into a river, taking sewer effluent with them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJLKhsLx18

Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it's rational or not, especially since I'm sure there are plenty of microplastics and pollutants in everything else, but I've completely removed filters & anything whole like shrimp from my diet. I enjoy shrimp and scallops, but honestly I feel like given my current knowledge it's not worth it. Maybe we'll find out that all the microplastics in the ocean are totally fine, but better safe than sorry in…

Are the microplastics just in the ocean though? I thought they were turning up just about everywhere now, even human placentas[0] [0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...

Significant amounts of plastics are also found in plants.[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611874

Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#74
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there’s anything I love about working in the IoT space, it’s the variety of applications people work on. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen shrimp farming applications but no mollusks yet.

The prototype will be run on shell scripts.

Shells come in all shapes and sizes, I hope they will be compatible.

Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#75
post #47
post #43

For those who love eating clams and just like myself wonder how safe it is to eat clams, while they filter huge amount of water -- yes, it would be like eating a used filter, that's why clams that you get in restaurants must be grown in very clean water [1]. [1] https://www.thurstoncountywa.gov/planning/planningdocuments/...

I am squeamish about eating any used filters: bivalves of any sort (and other filter feeders), liver, kidney... People have been doing so for a long time which is why I use the term "squeamish" which implies some lack of rationality. I thought oysters were "purified" by putting them in a bucket of clean water overnight. Myth?

There is a lot of nutrition in livers and kidneys, it's what predators go for first when eating an animal.

Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#76

This is an odd form of cross species slavery. It’s one thing to agree to the conditions and another to force it upon life. This... has a lot to contemplate. Service dogs don’t agree but there is an essence of joy there. Can you feel a clams emotions? I guess at this point you get close to the contemplation of plant life. There’s one thing to kill life and use it for food and then another to use it as a test for poiso…

Why is this downvoted?

Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#77

This is an odd form of cross species slavery. It’s one thing to agree to the conditions and another to force it upon life. This... has a lot to contemplate. Service dogs don’t agree but there is an essence of joy there. Can you feel a clams emotions? I guess at this point you get close to the contemplation of plant life. There’s one thing to kill life and use it for food and then another to use it as a test for poiso…

Very unscientific claim on my part, but I'm sure it doesn't make them better off to be restricted to servitude for another species.

Can you expand on that? What you're saying sounds interesting but it's vague or ambiguous.

Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#78

This is an odd form of cross species slavery. It’s one thing to agree to the conditions and another to force it upon life. This... has a lot to contemplate. Service dogs don’t agree but there is an essence of joy there. Can you feel a clams emotions? I guess at this point you get close to the contemplation of plant life. There’s one thing to kill life and use it for food and then another to use it as a test for poiso…

I thought that mussels and bivalves are like plants, there's no central nervous system and nothing else allowing them to be capable of consciousness.

How can we define what "capable of consciousness" is? As we become a species closer to exploring the vast cosmos, we have to be humble in our assumptions of what consciousness or life is. It's quite a Copernicus error to think that humanity is the center of relative consciousness to compare against. What consciousness is may be entirely incommensurable - which would be a serious error in our discovery of what else exists in the universe.

There's a lot of wisdom in Star Trek: TNG, and it feels more prudent than ever to contemplate these lessons as we near the point of becoming space faring species.

Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that mussels and bivalves are like plants, there's no central nervous system and nothing else allowing them to be capable of consciousness.

How can we define what "capable of consciousness" is? As we become a species closer to exploring the vast cosmos, we have to be humble in our assumptions of what consciousness or life is. It's quite a Copernicus error to think that humanity is the center of relative consciousness to compare against. What consciousness is may be entirely incommensurable - which would be a serious error in our discovery of what else ex…

I'm definitely humble when it comes to assuming consciousness and would rather consider it a spectrum than a binary thing.

Re: Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean

#80
post #35

Zebra Clams are changing the Great Lakes. Pretty much changing the whole ecosystem.

Changing it from one invasive species dominated ecology to a different invasive species dominated ecology. at least the new invasive ecology has clean water.

Well since we KILLED the Great Lakes in the early 20th Century
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