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Re: hormonal (or other) inhibition
In the '60s a man named Merill s. Rose did some fascinating experiments on
inhibition in tadpoles. He found that in an aquarium only one or two grew
well, and the rest were stunted and did not eat very much, in spite of an
abundance of food. He found that the big ones produced something in the
water that inhibited feeding in the rest. Water from the tank with the big
ones could be transferred to another tank, and it would inhibit tadpoles
there, too. The water lost its inhibitory properties if it was heated to
over 50 degrees centigrade. Interestingly, the inhibitory factor could be
filtered out of the water with ordinary filter paper, indicating it was not
something in solution, but particulate, possibly cells from the inhibitory
tadpoles. At that point, just when it was really getting interesting, the
research ended. A year went by, and then Professor Rose now working at a
different institution, I think, published a paper on something else,
something dull and uninteresting. Apparently the funding ran out for his
tadpole research. I have never had the time to find if somebody else
continued that line of research.
Paul Krombholz, in central Mississippi,where we got about 1.5 inches of
rain yesterday and last night.