A fire alarm goes off. Is this considered a response or not since it's not an actual organism?

Question

I'm aware that a stimulus will trigger a response. An example being an animal is cold so it moves towards the sun. However I also recall hearing that a response can only come from a living organism. Would a fire alarm going off be a response or not?

(Apologies in advance as I'm trying to remember old course material from the beginning of the semester so I'm a tad bit rusty.)

Answer 1

This is a stimulus, at least in terms of living organisms. The response is usually to leave the building. The next response is a group of people (firefighters) come to the building where the fire alarm is going off and determines if it is a false alarm (misfire of the mechanism, a prank by someone else) or a result of an actual fire that produces smoke, which would require another response of using water to put out the fire.

Technically, the fire alarm going off could also be a response if you were talking in terms of the sensor mechanism detecting smoke particles or a sudden change in temperature. In that case, the fire detection system recognizes a smoke particle (or change in temperature) which is the stimulus entering the sensor or someone pulling the fire alarm handle, and then the circuit is complete, causing the alarm to go off (result).

However, I would argue for the first interpretation over the second, because there isn't really any intelligence needed for the second interpretation (other than designing the system). The second interpretation involves a passive system, whereas the first involves organisms interacting with their environment as a result of a stimulus, and if you are in biology, then it doesn't consider inanimate objects as anything other than environmental factors and stimuli.