How a dragonfly's brain is designed to kill | DIY Neuroscience, a TED series
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- čas přidán 14. 09. 2018
- Dragonflies can catch prey with near perfect accuracy, the best among all predators. But how does something with so few neurons achieve such prowess? Neuroscientist Greg Gage and his colleagues explore how a dragonfly unerringly locks onto its preys and captures it within milliseconds using just sensors and a fake fly.
On DIY Neuroscience, a TED original series, watch cutting-edge neuroscience experiments on a shoestring budget. Check out more here: go.ted.com/diyneuroscience
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I also have only 16 neurons that help me to target precisely the fridge.
Evolution, boys.
Me cookies and ice cream
loool 😂
😂🤣😂😆 So unexpected & I so needed that TY!
And republican voters are working with only two neurons. One for denying evolution and the other for using a book of fairytales to guide their existence.
Henry TheGreatAmerican i would say 60% of the Republicans
LOL the kid who supplies the dragonflies for research
mcm1322 he’s going places clearly
Le gamin est le prochain à se faire planter des aiguilles de métal dans son crâne d'ado... pour voir si il a un cerveau ou de la 💩 à la place !! 😂😂
Probably her son
Love how they gave him a title.
Ey man, when I was a kid, I used to cut grass for a couple of bucks and if I had a choice I'd pick hunting bugs instead.
I'll never forget the experience I had as a teen, driving through the woods on a 4 wheeler when a dragonfly flew into my mouth at full speed. Talk about sharp and painful. Thankfully it managed to fly out and we both got away unharmed. That was my closest run-in with an apex predator.
Well when I was a child I loved to go into the woods to play and somehow I found a small pond with like 100+ dragonflies while I was running and I'm not sure If I got attacked or scared them but It was terrifying being in the middle of a cloud of insects.😭😭😭😭
Not truly an apex predator, as while fast there is a few creatures that eat them. But they’re close.
Apex to anything smaller than them.
No no no lol. 🤮🤮🤮🤮
ok but if dragonflies are so smart then why do they always get stuck inside my house and freak me out? like use ur 360 vision to find the fcking door
Or keep him to eat any flies that get into your home. That's my plan on those days in the summer when I'm having a party and the kids keep leaving the sliding glass door open
This comment made my day lolol
They don't have the capacity to think. You would need to hold a fly in the doorway lol
Only 16 neurons insanely fast, but not smart,
Because they're not "smart", they just have precise reflexes to help them catch flies. I wonder if hanging a small black object from an open window would cause it to fly through trying to catch it.
I'm a fan of them... just as long as they target mosquitoes!
Damsel flies are the ones that eat mesquitos
@@elliottjames671 LIAR! flies only eat trash and decomposed bodies.
@@dr.snowman4883 Damselflies are close relatives to dragonflies and predatory by nature. Both groups of insects hunt mosquitoes, flies, mayflies, butterflies, moths, and even other dragonflies and damselflies sometimes. They pretty much hunt every small flying insect in their territory.
@@wojrb4872 lol there like us...
@@dr.snowman4883 damsel flys they look like smaller dragonflies
Dragon flies are fps gods
I call hacks
I wish I had a biological aimbot :(
It's tpp they have a 360 view
What about the hummingbird
FOV = 9000
2:53 The woman watching him doing her experiment was one of the funniest thing I've seen today. I love her bored expression as he was moving a piece of paper back and forth going "OH, OH". It reminds me of my 5 year old niece sitting quietly watching her older sister playing with her toys hahahaha
Haha thanks for this, I see it now😂
How To Train A Dragonfly
lmfao
Yeah, there is a procedure for it. First it needs to pass the written test followed by a physical test. After that we give training for the top 3 dragon flies for next Marvel movies. LoL
Neuronless
Your*
Chem Hung fyi.. I was hiking in high cascades mountains this summer and ended up at tiny remote lake with giant blue fireflies that kept circling me. almost aggressive, or maybe never seen human? idk but they were big enough to mistake for Baby hummingbird. seriously !
For everyone's information, the "16 neurons" are just the ones directly connected to the wings. The entire brain probably contains at least half a million neurons, considering even a fruit fly has a quarter million.
thats a rather big cat
😂 Exactly what I was thinking!
Or potentially a small human
@@maxz4830 Fossils?
Well back then, elephants were the size of blue whales
@@tt_the_blackout7133 well back then Blue wales were the size of your mom, ohhhhhh boiiii....jk xD
2:44 Is it just me or did anyone else get the feeling she was pissed off with him there? Like they'd taken over her experiment or she was worried he was going to fk it up in some way, or is it just me? Maybe she was paranoid the thing would get hurt or loose, idk, just she seemed pretty on edge at this point in the video for whatever reason
Draeas Talonsbane It’s definitely not just you, I just came to comments to see if anyone noticed it. Looks like they did
Yes she seemed disturbed by him doing the test, her body language suggest she was highly uncomfortable. I wonder what happened.
That's a bit rude mate, for all we know they changed the agreed plans where she was going to demonstrate or something else happened off camera that made her upset/comfortable. Before that point she was doing great.
I was bothered by most the actual male presentator in this video, and even he did a good job. Who knows, maybe they promised some participation or an interesting job but then only left her sitting in a corner so that "look guys we have an expert".
We have absolutely no way of knowing what is behind the scenes and I don't think it's right to call a witch hunt on her or anybody in this. ps. I think she's also pretty.
I'm not sure if pissed off is the right way to put that. There's definitely some discomfort or irritation in her body language but it's an odd environment to be in and the experiment itself sounds really frustrating. If you look at one of their posts on the website (written by her I think) there's a description of the process and some its issues: blog.backyardbrains.com/2017/08/finalizing-a-no-harm-dragonfly-visual-neuron-recording-prep/ .
There was a part where she discussed moving the stimulus by hand and developing an automated rig which ran into a bunch of problems. In my mind the whole thing implied that it probably took a very long time to get any response worth using for the video, possibly many hours of sitting in front of the camera, re-anesthetizing the dragon fly, starting narration then redoing the whole thing when the response just looks like noise or the electrode popped out of place. So it's pretty hard to imagine someone sitting still making engaging contact with the camera for the entirety of the shots, considering they have no idea when they'll get one that's usable. Beyond that if getting a good enough response on camera is rare enough to be a nuisance they probably didn't want to go through that whole process just to refilm the magical 10 seconds for the sole sake of having a more camera ready appearance. That's the problem with filming science being done in real time, it gets frustrating and it's terribly hard to predict when it'll go without errors. Much easier to be camera ready when what's being filmed doesn't rely on random events going just right.
Insect mouth parts are the things that nightmares are made of. Teeth have nothing on them.
I used to watch my pet mantis eat and it was horrifying
Fun fact: Dragon flies aren't called dragon flies because of anything to do with dragons, it's actually a mistranslated from their original name which mean "Devil flies".
Violet Fyxe thanks dude
No. Back in the olden days Dragon flies would eat the bugs that bothered Dragons. They also talked to the dragon and witches apparently. Of course they dont have anything to do with dragons Dragons never existed FFS
Devil May Flies
+ Dennis Cat
Sea dragons are called 'sea dragons' because they look like dragons.
[citation needed]
3:03 Jaimie is noticeably uncomfortable with Greg's entertained test of the dragonfly's axons reactions.
She is going to regret that for as long as she lives.
Shes rubbing her fingers together alot which could indicate that she's stressed or uncomfortable.
lol@ 2:43+ Her facial expressions at him acting ridiculous. Like, "That's not how you do it. You make a mockery of my area of study. I'm done with this."
yeah, she seemed kinda disturbed/anxious. i was wondering why.
He tries to steal her thunder
she looks like a jealous child who is told to let her brother play with a toy, while she has to wait until he has finished.
actually, her entire area of study is a mockery 😂
SUPER LABINE and what do you for a living? I bet it's something not significant.
at 3:05 he says "Oh, yes!" and her eyes look upward!
That's called rolling upwards...
Nope, she actually looked up while controlling the pervy thought that crossed all of our minds.
She seemed very disinterested for that part right?
And right after that, they edit out her eyes lol
@@iamlibra3014159 ahahah right
Dragonfly's were the only big bugs I wasn't afraid if as a kid, I actually loved them... Childhood is ruined
:( ..
I love them, as i love all my children
What about butterflies, though?
@@Benimation Butterflies are scary 🙁
Yeah, when you think about it, they're basically caterpillars with wings.
@@Benimation Actually I'm scared of them because of a bad dream I had when I was about eight 😅. Butterflies came to my house and killed my family in this dream.
In my local language we call them *helicopter*
tony huckip in my language we call them λιβελουλα/λιβελουλες (plural), pronounced like and originates from Latin libellula (with a v instead of b). Lib as in library because their bodies look like scrolls or something.
Namaste!
We used to call them helicopters as kids too :)
Trollslända
In Russian "стрекоза" /stri:kaza/ )) We (me and my brother) used to play with them when we were children.
It’s amazing how similar this is to a simple but specialized artificial neural network, trained to do only one thing really well.
Doesn't work for me... I connected my dragonfly to my USB and I get a "install dragonfly drivers" error.
Is this a bug?
A bug! Get it? Because dragonflies are insects?
I'll show myself out...
🤘
@@wondersofivan2338 shaka brah
Yeah, that was beyond terrible, honestly
Have you tried restarting your dragonfly?
+Giorgos D I did but then it died on me...
get it? cause it was alive?
... I will go outside again...
If you put a larger and a smaller dragonfly face to face, the larger dragonfly will always attempt to eat the smaller dragonfly. The smaller dragonfly will never attempt to eat the larger dragonfly. I know because a friend and I used to catch dragonflies and test this :|
that was just self- defense . adults dont kill eachothers , the aggression was meant for the one who was holding their wings
@@wondersofivan2338 no it's nothing to do with self defense yes they will do it when it's time to mate but they are cannibals and have been known to eat smaller dragonflies
Dragonflys are so beautiful. There was a family of them that lived on my grandma's property. They are peaceful to humans and they're colors are so beautiful. There was this shiny neon blue looking one and it was just amazingly beautiful.
Uhh... that girl looks super annoyed, 2:52, maybe he's doing it wrong?
GDC I get the impression that this guy is just incredibly irritating to be around
True
Wait... dragonflies are aggressive? What about all my childhood memories of them landing on me?? WERE THEY TRYING TO KILL ME?!?!
they just didn't perceive you as alive, else they would have ran away. most likely mistook you for a tree or something
I had a lot of dragonflies here, so there was a lot in my childhood. I saw they toooooo aggressive, they move soo fast, always going around you... Wondering if they were after me ( I feel like a pray, they look like little assassins, was really scary :c)
Lol
They are aggressive to prey. They showed how they process prey in the video - you would be part of the landscape, not lunch.
How on Earth would a dragonfly murder you?
"When dragonflies were the size of cats..." **Shows giant dragonfly the size of a bus eating a human.
What you don't explain here: That a dragonfly apparently can anticipate where the prey is going to be upon inteception and go there directly. (Apparent in the video you show.) Unlike most other predators who usually aim for the momentous location, thus approaching their prey on a much less efficient asymptote.
It's not almost like a reflex, it's a reflex!
more DIY, please! Thanks TED
Love the new TED format. Awesome! Love the Neuroscience series and the scientists. The animation of just one side of wings bending more was super cool. How close are we to designing such controllable wings in aircrafts? That'd be so cool!
I hit a dragonfly one day and 30 minutes later it flew into my head and hit me back...coincidences?
Revenge
I DOnt ThinK sO
Maybe there was a fly on your face, a forefly!
It has 16 neurons soooo... Yep.
Bro Pru you probably broke its wings or something
Dragonflies look like boomerangs when they mate. Their butts stick together and they fly around like that.
The dragonfly has it's brain so close to the parts of the body that it needs to control, and those parts are so light and quick to react, that for it everything looks like if all was in slow motion. For large slow creatures like us it is too fast to catch. Unfortunately for it, flies are also wired that way, so it is not as easy to catch a fly as it seems necessarily.
im just gonna keep a bunch of dragonflies in my house because
1. Theyre awesome
2. there are too many hecking houseflies
*THE 38 PEOPLE WHO DISLIKED* think they're more dangerous than *DRAGONFLIES*
A beautiful delicate touch. I loved the trills
It has been ages since I saw a dragonfly. 20 years dragonflies and butterflies were used to be everywhere and me and my friends used to catch them. But now I hardly find one. It's hard to find them these days.
dragonflies are the coolest insects
uhh its a dragon so...
They're freaky when they are Larvae. They crawl around under water eating every little living thing in sight.
I bet if they tie this guy up and hook electrodes to his brain and show him pictures of circles and flies he will make the same curve on the screen
Did the Dragonfly survive after the experiment?
Excellent video. Thank you for making it.
This is very simplified. Even insects have up to a million neurons with very complex wiring. And they are to some degree able to learn
@@cula4083 yes that's right but I also think that the targeting mechanism is more complicated than this. Maybe this 16 neurons are an essential part of it but definitely not all.
And also very interesting -- HOW did they build in this thin wire in axon? Nothing said about it. Silence.
We still have several reflexes, some triggered by our visual system. The reason that our eyes don't have direct connections to our limbs is probably that we are larger than dragonflies.
Thats a really small cat
All I know is I'm glad I'm not that dragonfly with the metal probes all up in my brain...
In all honesty dragonflys have always been chill with me. They like to rest on my hat. I've never felt they could or would bite me.
it sounds like having some kind of aiming hack in a 1st person shooter game. Where the the aimer tracks the target for you and so you don't have to aim. Just shoot.
Aimbot OP.
They slow down time to catch there prey ....wow 👍
Most flying insects "slow down time" so, it really is how dragonflies are engineered... ability to course correct on a dime, even fly straight up, down or even backwards with little effort!, and those freaking eyes that see almost everything. and don't forget those mandibles, I mean they hunt bees!!!!!
When you completely miss the point of the video
r/woooosh
Just Jake when you completly miss the joke
They evolved L5N mutations :)
This was an awesome/intresting video. Keep em coming
I like where this is going they should keep this up
3:01 she's like.... Yeah stop wasting my time.
It seems everyone is getting that impression.
The theory of evolution
Interesting
I was almost going to sleep after the video, but that last sentence made my eyes wide open.
I'm now interested in seeing a video clip of what happens the other 3 percent of the time.
I wonder if it's possible to genetically engineer back those cat sized dragon flies!
ZDY Now you're talking! 😜
It actually comes down to an O2 problem, there was much more oxygen in the Paleozoic era. The increase in O2 led to monstrous insects, centipedes and Dragonflies.
Aeoster Neil deGrasse Tyson
mentioned this in one of his
episodes of COSMOS
Spacetime Odyssey.
Funny thing is, it has actually been done before. Google 'HIGH OXYGEN LEVELS SPAWN MONSTER DRAGONFLIES'. There's an article on it by Wired :)
Just let them grow up in a high oxygen environment.
Ahhh. Don't tell Elon
Elon knows all, Elon made all.
Elon would transform them into killer robot
But you cannot defy your creator.
I love the genius's picture on the top left corner.
This video shows more how humans torture dragonflies, than how dragonflies kill
Thats so true ..
Dragonflies are best bugs.
Yeah.... Out of all the creatures in the animal kingdom the dragonfly is the #1 assassins/hunters
I love my little predators, don't you love how they murder those flies?
I can tell you that I think there is way more going on in the Odonate brain than just instinctual killing. While driving a 4-wheel Kawasaki for the Florida Forest Service, I have been accosted many a time by dragonflies that swoop to the side of your face, going 15-20 MPH, tilt their orientation to get a better look at your face, and zoom off within a second or two, apparently satisfied that you present no threat to their territory. I don't pretend to know what's going on in their brains, but it's a damn close proximity to what's going on in ours.
she looks so fed up when he's yelling "Oh yes!"
I definetly need a dragonfly in my room.
3:46 Nature's Aimbot Hack. Damn you nature, fix the aimbot hackers.
Size does matter.
haha
Simple reflex machines, intriguing.
I like these short videos by TED
"Dracarys."
1:19 lmfao
I love, love, love dragonflies! They are my favorite insect.
I watched a dragonfly hunting a swarm of flies in the garden the other day. It was fascinating how precise it was.
What if we would for example take a warehouse, make it so no air goes in and no air goes out, put some dragon flies inside there and increase the oxygen levels.
Would they become bigger and bigger after a few generations of breeding?
hmm...
Yes. There are studies where oxygen rich environments caused size increases in insects. I’m not sure if it generalizes to dragon flies, or what the cap on size increases is, but search the study!
@@grantbanfill1117 Thats interesting gonna look this up 🤔
You sound like a supervillain
Rings a bell to the name given to the new supervised Chinese search engine Google is creating for the country...guess this videos sheds a light on why the name was chosen
The tension is intense!
Extremely interesting video. Thanks.
and finally winner winner chicken dinner 4:05
so cruel , dragonfly has feelings too!!! #freethedragonfly
1: the dragonfly was numbed with cold before fastening it down. 2: insects likely don't feel pain.
@cypher_dragon_123 You should not be so sure about insects not feeling pain. I think it is likely that insects feel at least something equivalent to pain: "Given our lack of understanding of how higher-order nociception is processed in invertebrates, as well as the brain architecture required to experience pain, we cannot be sure that insects do not feel pain." (Adamo 2016) Check: doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.05.005
@@cyber_dragon_123 insects do feel pain or else they wouldnt try to escape predator attacks
@@wondersofivan2338 or they don't wanna die, maybe... That sounds reasonable...right? Also, it's not like they killed the dragon fly. Also the whole pain thing, it's like pain but without feeling. They can tell their body is damaged without looking at it but do not feel it, of course this varies. Btw if y'all are so concerned about a lil dragon fly being handled with care for a better understanding of the whole species why don't you go help the several tarantula species slowly being wiped out... or do spiders not have feelings? Anyway this was a cool video.
Its like fucking directly wiring with a motherboard running a simple algorythm with wings, this is truly terrifying.
That lady looked super nervous when the paper fly target came out
The moment she realised 2:53
...the moment she realized what?
"aww yes!"
@@globin3477 ....that the answer is 42.
OMG. You guys are geniuses. You figured out dragonflies don't hunt birds. Bravo.
Well, but they still attack birds! Have seen it myself many times!
that was not the point of the experiment. they wanted to demonstrate that larger objects aren't reflexively perceived as prey. if a dragonfly wanted to attack a bird it would need to make concious effort to do so, and it's reflexes wouldn't help it
Tom Riddle Let me get this cleared out, you are positive that you have seen a dragon fly attack a bird which is orders of magnitude larger?
@@XenoContact Yes it attacks birds that are many times larger!
AMAZING VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!!!! More stuff like this please!
Well that's just fascinating.
finally good scientific content and not political brainwashing
Whining about "political brainwashing" on TED and watching Alex Jones. What a hypocrit.
Though it IS brainwashing. It says that the dragonfly has 16 neurons, though even the simplest jellyfish have thousands of neurons and dragonflies are a lot more complex. For example, fruit flies have 250 000 neurons. And it is just one of the many facts they got wrong in this video.
EDIT: I am wrong, read below. While dragonfly has more than 16 neurons, 16 neurons is the number of neurons that control the wings when hunting prey.
@@techma82 thanks for the enlightenment but i would argue that being wrong is not as bad as political brainwashing. Still though one would and should expect TED to have a higher standard when it comes to truthful scientific data but i still wouldnt call it brainwashing but feel free to disagree i love to learn and getting proved wrong is the best way to do so
@@techma82 uhm it doesn't sound extremely unplausible,look im no expert but a quick google search says that a roundworm has 200 neurons total..you just happened to pick jellyfishes who are famous for having a ton of neurons that act as an integrated nervous system (to make up for the lack of a brain)
Firstly, they said they have 16 neurons that connect the eyes to the individual wing motility. Stop trying to act smart when you can't even be bothered to do some basic reading comprehension.
How many neurons does it have to feel the metal spikes piercing its head? Or is that irrelevant Greg Gage?
They dont have a sense of pain like you or I would relate to so get your panties out of a bunch and go virtue signal somewhere else
The electrodes sit on the skin, the insect isn't harmed in the experiment
I'm living for this wallpaper
I just woke up from a dream about a dragonfly in my bedroom, now I just opened my phone and I see this video recommended to me. So weird.
Please don't use the word 'designed' in this context, as that implies there's a designer that made it. Evolved is the word you're looking for.
Please don’t use the word ‘evolved’ in this context, as that implies there was an explosion of nothing that made it over trillions of years by chance. Designed is the word you’re looking for.
@@stephenburdette2464 an explosion of nothing? What are you even talking about... Also yes, random chance of mutation is exactly how evolution works.
RubsNL People can use whatever word they want.
Not all scientists believe in evolution so he is free to express it based on his context
Just a thought for y’all, who gets to tell the God who created this earth that He can’t use evolution to make His creations? If God is omnipotent, then He would know enough to be able to make the ancestors to today’s critters and just let evolution do the hard work for Him. Work smarter, not harder.
This is all assuming a trapped dragonfly is actually thinking about prey, versus a giant pair of hands waving a giant piece of paper in front of it...
Chuck Just Chuck “Thinking”
thank you for this video 😀
1:18 i dont know why i found it hilarious and adorable in the same time
So it's like when we look at something and our eyes follow it. We aren't controlling every little movement in our eyes, but us staying fixated on something makes our eyes follow it through reflex.
dragonfly going after a bird, now that would be pretty cool to see
Totally necessary to interview the kid with the mesh
Excellent design.
Mind: "go to sleep. gotta wake up in 5 hours for school"
Me: "lol hold on i gotta watch this video about how dragon flies are born to kill"
What I learnt from dragonflies' : have a good and precise crosshair placement
There was one night in my room where there was an occasional rattling noise somewhere and I couldn't sleep with that. So I went around trying to find the source and it turns out it was a dragonfly under a cupboard. The dragonfly has flipped over but continued trying to fly every now and then but instead just kept beating its wings against the ground.
This is basically dragonfly torture
What if you will find that dragonfly precision is not only behavioral survival instinct but the cosciousness, awarness .
That was so cool! To be honest i had no idea dragon flies hunted regular flies. I need more by my house immediately
3:00 the expression you make when you are getting late for the party and your grandma won't leave you !!!
haha that lady at 02:55 - 03:10 looked like she was rolling her eyes at you