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Pheromones
This nOde last updated August 12th, 2003 and is permanently morphing...
(4 Imix (Water Lily) / 9 Yax'kin (New Sun) - 121/260 - 12.19.10.9.1)
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pheromone
pheromone (fèr´e-mon´)
noun
A chemical secreted by an
animal, especially an insect, that influences the behavior or development
of others of the same species.
[Greek pherein, to carry
+ (hor)mone.]
- pher´omon´al
adjective
Pheromone
Pheromone, any chemical produced
by an animal that affects the behavior of other animals. Pheromones are
found throughout the living world. The complex but primitive single-celled amoeba
Dictyostelium, for example, uses a pheromone to attract others of its kind
for reproduction. Insects regularly use pheromones for the same purpose.
Social insects- insects that live together in groups- usually have many
pheromonal messages. Ants, for example, usually have a pheromone for marking
trails to food, another for starting attacks on enemies, a third that signals
the need to flee, and others that identify their larvae in the darkness
of the nest.
Pheromones are also common in vertebrates.
Mammals regularly mark their territorial boundaries with pheromones from specialized
glands. These odors can be detected at great distances and can alter behavior
dramatically. Vertebrates also have additional odors that identify animals individually.
Neighboring mammals of many species recognize one another by the odors that
each leaves along mutual boundaries or at traditional scenting posts, and intruders
are detected almost immediately.
Even mates and offspring often recognize one another by odor.
KAS: Pheromones I believe are an essential part of our
development, yet it seems that human beings are losing their olfactory sense.
Perhaps rather than relying solely upon the semantic universe to interpret meaning,
we could become aware of the communication happening between people on a chemical
level.
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T.M.: Well, that's an interesting
idea. I'd never thought of that. I can imagine a kind of Tantric psychedelic alchemy
where
the purpose of all the sexuality was actually the production of some kind
of pheromone which was psychedelic. If you look at pheromones at the molecular
level they are rather like drugs. For example, both tend to be aromatic,
in other words, tend to have electronically active ring structures that
indicates aromaticity. We could pursue this speculatively, but it may be
that Tantra is basically a make-your-own-drug laboratory program where
you need a person of the opposite sex and then unusual physiological activities
to produce unusual physiological byproducts. I think the world is still
waiting for the real expositors of Tantra to explain just what it is all
about.
by Oliver Ho off of _Entering The Plural_ 12" on Blueprint #11 (1998)Anomalog:
Pheromone
Enhancers To Intimidate Opponents HRL Labs:
We are developing techniques
for coordinating the actions of large numbers of small-scale robots to
achieve useful large-scale results in surveillance, reconnaissance, hazard
detection, and path finding. Inspired by the chemical markers used by insects
for communication and coordination, we exploit the notion of a "virtual
pheromone," implemented using simple beacons and directional sensors mounted
on each robot. Virtual pheromones facilitate simple communication and coordination
and require little on-board processing.
Collections of robots will be able to perform complex tasks such as leading
the way through a building to a hidden intruder or locating critical choke
points. This is possible because the robot collective becomes a computing
grid embedded in the environment. The user interface
to this distributed robot collective is itself distributed. Instead of
communicating with each robot individually, the entire collective works
cooperatively to provide a unified world-embedded display. Our methods
need no explicit maps or models of the environment, and require no explicit
knowledge of robot locations yet they still allow such global quantities
as shortest routes, blocked routes, and contingency plans to be computed
by the robot population.
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