No-Brainers:
We cannot do much with a brain. So is there a thing called a no-brainer, someone or something without a brain? in 1945, farmer Lloyd went to grab a chicken for supper and as he cut the head of the chicken, the chicken didn’t die, it lived for another 18 months and was named Mike. He walked and perched, when needed he was fed little drops of water or pieces of corn down its throat. Mike the headless chicken didn’t show signs of a no-brainer. Although it didn’t have a head left, it had some brain-stem. A clearer no-brainer is cockroach. They don’t even need a head to breathe as they breathe through the holes of their body. They are controlled by not a big brain but little bundles of nerves, ganglia, throughout their body. So even when completely decapitated, a cockroach can live for four weeks but they will eventually starve to death because of no head.
Reflexes:
Us, humans will die within seconds without a brain. Even so, we do some actions that don’t require the brain when we have our heads intact. For example, reflexes. When we accidentally put our hand on a hot stove, nerve impulses although being fast cannot cut it. So it’s no use to tell the brain what’s happening then, we need to take action fast. At times like these our immediate reaction is mediated by other parts of the nervous system. Some involuntary processes like the cardiac muscle which is self exciting work without help of brain. But these works still require the presence of our brain.
Energy:
Even when you are dead and brainless, your muscles contain a little bit of energy in the form of ATP. It was found researching that even a single limb, detached from the body can move when touched because cells contain the energy. Same thing can be found when salt is put on the limb. But this movement stops as soon as they run out of energy.
Within the Body:
It is a misconception that crops continue to grow fingernails, it is actually the skin that is shrinking making hair and nails appear longer. To find a satisfactory no-brainer we might look at the skin cells on the periphery of our body. They don’t require continuation of stream of nutrients from the blood. So even when we are dead the skin cells can live taking in nutrients through osmosis. Even after 24 hours skin cells can be harvested from corpse. Also, part of digestion work is done by bacteria that live inside us. So after our death these can continue digesting. So, this way making poop is kind of a no-brainer.
Yes-Brainer!
On an interesting note, the bacteria are foreign bacteria. So are these you? Or the skin cells that can live on by themselves, are these your parts or just cells that have made home in the body? So if you are merely what your brain does and not what the cells do on their own when the brain is not there, in a way being alive is a yes-brainer.
Transcripted By benazir Elahee Munni