Octopuses hunt by 'tasting' with their suckers
Nature Podcast
00:00
The Evolution of the Octopus Sensory Receptors
The receptors they identified, which they call chemotactile receptors or CRs, didn't look like the kind of receptors usually seen in sensory systems. They're most closely related to a family of receptors called nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. These are found throughout the nervous systems of many different animals but usually they detect neurotransmitters within the body and are involved with things like controlling muscle contractions. In humans, they're the focus of research into treatments for everything from Parkinson's disease to nicotine addiction,. But they are not sensory receptors, or so researchers thought. Octopus have converted these ancestral nicotinic AcetylCholine receptors into sensory receptors.
Transcript
Play full episode
