Ohkay eyeballers of the List

Come along with me and let's have some fun.

Maybe we can look at something from another perspective in considering
how we got here from where we were, way up there. Way up there is in
front of your ferret's nose.

Steaming coffee, bacon and scrambled eggs cooking, the buttered toast
in the toaster oven bubbling, and a whiff of my own morning breath,
prior to the tooth brush.

Ahhh, the smells of a breakfast anticipated. Never mind that last
smell.and let's ignore it if we can. As we pull up to the breakfast
table, our mind's eye on the grub that's coming. we should stop for
a moment and contemplate what's happening in our mouth. Something's
happening because I can feel it. My mouth is a little bit more moist,
like more juicy than it was before I smelled all the good breakfast
food.

There's no doubt about it. Even before that first sip of juice, or the
coffee, yo Bro, wha zzup, man? I could spit with hardly any effort at
all. As a matter of fact, I'm nearly drooling and dribbling over my
lower lip. The saliva is pooling up in my mouth even before I've had
anything to eat, but, my-o-my, is this going to be good, or what!

Let's consider what is happening here. We have a stimulus and we have
a response that is triggered by that stimulus..The stimulus is the
interception of airborne molecules landing on the nasal and mouth
nerves that our brain interprets as odor. We do realize that a smell is
the deposit of molecules or larger chemical compounds that are actual
pieces of what ever it is that we smell. It is a piece of scrambled
egg, a piece of bacon, a droplet of coffee, and even the chemical
decomposition swirl of alkaline substances that yield our sensation of
morning breath. Our memory identifies these chemical messengers by the
electrical ions travelling along the well worn pathway creases in our
brain and which we have habituated to recognize as the smells of
breakfast and phew.

Now let's compare the ferret waking in the morning and slipping down
out of his hammock or nestbox to the floor of his cage, visiting the
liter pan, scoot wiping his rectum and meandering over to his food dish
for that first morning sniff test to get some idea of what he has to
eat this morning. When I consider the ferret, I ask myself how similar
is the stimuli and the response in a ferret's brain identical to our
sensations of our and his olefactory sense? Assuming in both mammals
that the senses are similar if not identical, just how do they differ?
And how do we find out what those differences are, if any?

I should like to continue kinda wondering out loud, so to speak, and
travel along down the ferret's tube and to give some little genuine
thought to what we will find there, what's going on therein, and why
what's happening is happening. I invite you, one and all, to contribute
on a continuing basis to our thinking and wondering about the ferret's
tube and just what is going on, all the way from one end to the other.
Please join me and give us the benefit of your knowledge. This way we
shall all be better off and certainly more informed.

So until we meet again, Auf Wiedersehen Frettchenvolk
(German: See you again, ferret people)
Iksnipil Drawde

[Posted in FML 6227]