Word: statocyst
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...eight rubbery arms an octopus has an excellent sense of touch. Its taste sensors, which seem to be concentrated around the rims of the clutching suckers, can detect chemical traces that are barely strong enough to affect a human tongue. It is equipped with a statocyst, an efficient apparatus just below the brain that acts like the gravity perceiver of the human inner ear, telling the octopus which direction...
...octopus seems, superficially, to be judging the visual world around it as a dog or human would. But when its gravity-detecting statocyst is removed, it becomes virtually helpless. Apparently its system of telling an object's orientation is to keep its two eyes level, which it does with the help of the statocyst. If this organ is lost, the eyes get out of level, and the octopus no longer knows which way is up -or, for that matter, down. Humans and other higher vertebrates are not handicapped in this way. Their more elaborate brains make allowance...
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