this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
97 points (97.1% liked)

Damn, that's interesting!

4688 readers
1 users here now

  1. No clickbait
  2. No Racism and Hate speech
  3. No Imgur Gallery Links
  4. No Infographics
  5. Moderator Discretion
  6. Repost Guidelines
  7. No videos over 15 minutes long
  8. No "Photoshopped" posts
  9. Image w/ text posts must be sourced in comments

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
9Q6u7hroWkwW9@lemmy.ml
97
This wasp is half the size of an amoeba and its microscopic brain has a trick up its sleeve.. (blogs.dal.ca)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by FrankLaskey@lemmy.ml to c/damnthatsinteresting@lemmy.ml
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

These wasps are not single-celled organisms though, and their brains alone contain 4600 neurons. For reference, the brain of a honeybee contains ~1 million neurons. Despite their extremely small heads (again, look at that head next to the SINGLE CELLED amoeba) the wasps can still fly, seek out mates, and find thrip eggs to parasitize. So…what? How?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Jack@lemmy.ca 17 points 10 months ago

Answer: "The lifespan of these wasps is only 5 days"

"it's brain cells get rid of their own nucleus and all its stored maintenance information. The neurons already exist, so maintenance is the only task [...] requiring DNA, and they don’t live long enough for that to matter at this point"

"No nucleus or DNA frees up half of a neuron’s volume"