I’m just thinking—it might be that while heat does determine brain efficiency to a large degree it might not be so simple as it might be determined by the architecture.
DIfferent animals might be adapated to a certain temperature range—it might not make your brain more efficient when it is cooled in this way.
does anybody know how the cognition of coldblood creatures varies as they warm and cool throughout the day?
I’m not sure what theory that observation would test cleanly, since ectotherms have such a complicated relationship to heat.
One thing I just checked is honeybees, which I’ve read a book or two about, because I know they have large cooling requirements for their wing muscles (their blood doesn’t move O2, it just moves heat, basically). When the hive gets cold in the winter, some go to the center and lock their wings with their arms, and shiver their wing muscles, and this heats the entire hive. So they are kind of endothermic? Maybe? Depending on definitions?
It looks like probably individual honeybee brains are cooled by using honey sort of like how dogs use saliva, with evaporative cooling from the mouth. Then, when flying on a very hot day, the waste heat from the wings is moved, by the blood, to the thorax (but not to the head) to use the thorax as a radiator.
When it is cold, the stationary wings can send heat to the thorax via the blood, but somehow the head doesn’t need this.
Woah Jennifer this is wild stuff. Fascinating!
I’m just thinking—it might be that while heat does determine brain efficiency to a large degree it might not be so simple as it might be determined by the architecture.
DIfferent animals might be adapated to a certain temperature range—it might not make your brain more efficient when it is cooled in this way.
does anybody know how the cognition of coldblood creatures varies as they warm and cool throughout the day?
I’m not sure what theory that observation would test cleanly, since ectotherms have such a complicated relationship to heat.
One thing I just checked is honeybees, which I’ve read a book or two about, because I know they have large cooling requirements for their wing muscles (their blood doesn’t move O2, it just moves heat, basically). When the hive gets cold in the winter, some go to the center and lock their wings with their arms, and shiver their wing muscles, and this heats the entire hive. So they are kind of endothermic? Maybe? Depending on definitions?
It looks like probably individual honeybee brains are cooled by using honey sort of like how dogs use saliva, with evaporative cooling from the mouth. Then, when flying on a very hot day, the waste heat from the wings is moved, by the blood, to the thorax (but not to the head) to use the thorax as a radiator.
When it is cold, the stationary wings can send heat to the thorax via the blood, but somehow the head doesn’t need this.
What do you think this might imply for the brain & cognition?