The Importance Of Olfaction In Survival

The Importance of Olfaction in Survival

The Buriganga recovers health but for how long? Nilratan Halder August 07, With the monsoon, the Buriganga gets back some of its health. Even the naked eye can see that the water is no longer jet black like tar and does not emit foul smell now. This has been confirmed lately by a study carried out by the Centre for Atmospheric Pollution Studies of the Stamford University.

The acidity of water is within the acceptable range and particles per million have also been tolerable. But in the channel of old Buriganga this is yet to come anywhere near the standard. Be that what it may, the fact is that Buriganga is comparatively in a better health now since A here of factors has made this possible.

Rains this year have been plenty and this has been further helped by frequent and at times prolonged lockdowns. What it shows is that the Buriganga may still stand a chance of survival if proper measures are taken from now on. If the lockdowns have been of help, the massive eviction drive launched by the Bangladesh Inland Transport Authority BIWTA in which hundreds of illegal structures including polluting factories were knocked down has also proved beneficial.

Exam (elaborations)

Further encroachment has been discouraged by this campaign for saving rivers in Bangladesh. This has been an awakening on the part of a nation that has by now earned the infamy of what may be coined as 'rivericide' killing of rivers.

That rivers all across the country have been strangulated or encroached upon to turn them into mere canals or ditches is no secret. The authorities turned a blind eye to such cases even after environmental groups and rights bodies brought the issue to the former's notice. Had the river saving campaign received the attention it deserves, many rivers would not have died or been in their death throes. The media have long been carrying pictorial reports on mindless encroachment of rivers all over Bangladesh.

Besides receiving inputs from the limbic system and basal ganglia, Hb also gets inputs from multiple sensory modalities. Sensory responses of Hb neurons in zebrafish are asymmetrical: the left dorsal Hb and right dorsal Hb dHb preferentially respond to visual and olfactory stimuli, respectively, implying different functions of the left and right dHb. While visual responses of the left dHb L-dHb have been implicated in light-preference behavior, the significance of olfactory responses of the right dHb R-dHb remains under-examined. It was reported that the R-dHb can gate innate attraction to a bile salt. However, considering a broad range of odors that R-dHb respond to, it is of interest to examine the role of R-dHb in other olfactory behaviors, especially food seeking, which is essential for animals' survival. Here, using in vivo whole-cell recording and calcium imaging, we first characterized food extract-evoked responses of Hb neurons. Interestingly, this right-to-left asymmetry of olfactory responses converts into a ventral-to-dorsal pattern in the interpeduncular nucleus IPN , a main downstream target of Hb. The Importance of Olfaction in Survival