Sensor - Sensors in Nature

Sensors in Nature

Further information: Sense

All living organisms contain biological sensors with functions similar to those of the mechanical devices described. Most of these are specialized cells that are sensitive to:

  • Light, motion, temperature, magnetic fields, gravity, humidity, moisture, vibration, pressure, electrical fields, sound, and other physical aspects of the external environment
  • Physical aspects of the internal environment, such as stretch, motion of the organism, and position of appendages (proprioception)
  • Environmental molecules, including toxins, nutrients, and pheromones
  • Estimation of biomolecules interaction and some kinetics parameters
  • Internal metabolic milieu, such as glucose level, oxygen level, or osmolality
  • Internal signal molecules, such as hormones, neurotransmitters, and cytokines
  • Differences between proteins of the organism itself and of the environment or alien creatures.

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    “But the nature of our civilized minds is so detached from the senses, even in the vulgar, by abstractions corresponding to all the abstract terms our languages abound in, and so refined by the art of writing, and as it were spiritualized by the use of numbers, because even the vulgar know how to count and reckon, that it is naturally beyond our power to form the vast image of this mistress called “Sympathetic Nature.””
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