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We really are star-stuff.
Beyond science, quantum physics crossed scientific borders to establish itself in the imagination of the literati of the first third of the 20th century.
According to A study published in the magazine Biology Letters, oysters are one of the creatures that live in sync with the moon, since the lunar cycle influences the width of the opening of their shells.
Biological clock
After tracking down 12 Pacific oysters, Crassostrea gigas, which were submerged along the French coast, were carefully observed through three lunar cycles, each lasting 29.5 days. Using electrodes, They measured the width with which the oysters opened their shells every 1.6 seconds, and then compared that data with data about the moon's cycle.
They thus discovered that oysters paid attention to the phases of the moon: as the moon grew or became full, the oysters narrowed their shells, never closing them completely. And when the moon began to wane, or retreated into the new moon phase, they opened their shells again.
What that suggests is that oysters may rely on an internal moon clock rather than direct signals, such as the intensity of moonlight. If that were the case, they would open their shells equally during the first quarter moon and the last quarter moon since the intensity of the light would be similar. But the oysters reacted differently to those phases, suggesting they are following an internal calendar rather than reacting to Moonlight.
But why do oysters care about the phases of the moon? Laura Payton, co-author of the study from the University of Bordeaux, points out the following:
We know that oysters open their valves when there is food, and previous research has shown that the movement of plankton, which oysters filter from seawater and consume, is influenced by moonlight.
Oysters aren't the only creatures that follow lunar cycles. Sozens of coral species use moonlight as a signal to release their wads of eggs and sperm. Some crab species also use the intensity of moonlight to signal the start of their mating migrations. Salmon, squid, and plankton also synchronize their life cycles with the moon.
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The news
Oysters open and close their shells in sync with the phases of the Moon
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
Kill one person to prevent the death of ten? Torture a victim to prevent someone else from torturing them more cruelly? Commit something illegal because someone else will end up committing it in the same way? All of them are dilemmas, unsolvable through logic, that are resolved under the moral prism of the consequentialism.
Consequentialism, then, maintains that the morality of an action depends only on its consequences (the end justifies the means).
Teleological ethics
Consequentialism, or teleological ethics, refers to all those theories of normative ethics that hold that the rightness or wrongness of our actions is determined by the value or disvalue that occurs due to them. It is also known as consecutive ethics, since the judgment of acts is based on their consequences, and is opposed to deontological ethics, which maintain that the morality of an action is independent of the good or evil generated from it.
Jeremy Bentham, father of utilitarianism, one of the main consequentialist theories.
A type of teleological ethics, the one that perhaps interests us most when we morally evaluate an everyday issue, is utilitarianism, that is: an action is morally correct if favorable results predominate over undesirable ones, regardless of who the beneficiaries are. Therefore, The best possible action is that which produces the greatest good; as would be measured by an impartial observer.
It has been argued against consequentialist ethics that it is impossible to fully estimate the consequences of an action, making it difficult to reach confident judgments about them. So, instead of consequentialism, others opt for virtue ethics: upholding untouchable ethical principles, whatever happens (even if it is bad for one or bad for all).
Naturally, none of us adopts one way or another of conducting ourselves through the world absolutely, but rather swings from one extreme to another depending on the circumstances and, also, our own feelings. moral matrices. The theory of moral matrices or moral foundations was first proposed by psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph, based on the work carried out by the cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder, and has subsequently been developed by a diverse group of collaborators, and popularized in Haidt's book entitled The mind of the righteous.
Our moral matrixes also incline us to adopt all kinds of decisions, including political ones (from our position to abortion to If we heel to the left or right).
There is no correct position. Everything can be debated and weighed. However, to know to what extent you can feel moral disgust or not when acting in a consequentialist way, I propose below a small moral dilemma in this regard.:
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The news
To what extent can the end justify the means? It all depends on your moral matrix
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.