Welcome to the quantum science podcast. Each episode we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics. I'm Susan Vallett. Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators, collect pollen, and more.

New experiments explore how evolution may have influenced this phenomenon.

That's next.

Quantum Magazine is an editorially independent online publication supported by the

Simon's Foundation to enhance

public understanding of science.

Imagine that you're a honey bee.

In many ways, your world is small.

Your four delicate wings, each less than a centimeter long, transport your half-gram

body through looming landscapes full of giant animals and plants. In other ways, your world is expansive,

even grand. Your five eyes see colors and patterns that humans can't, and your multi-sensory antennae detect

odors from distant flowers. For years, biologists have wondered whether bees have

another grand sense that we lack. The static electricity they accumulate by flying could

be potent enough for them to sense and influence surrounding objects

through the air. It's similar to the charge generated when you shuffle across carpet in thick

socks. Aquatic animals such as eels, sharks, and dolphins are known to sense electricity in water,

which is an excellent conductor of charge. By contrast, air is a poor conductor,

but it may relay enough to influence living things and their evolution. In 2013,

Daniel Robert, a sensory ecologist at the University of Bristol in England, broke ground in this

discipline. His lab discovered

that bees can detect and discriminate among electric fields radiating from flowers. Since then,

more experiments have documented that spiders, ticks, and other bugs can perform a similar

...