[HN Gopher] Butterflies accumulate static electricity to attract...
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Butterflies accumulate static electricity to attract pollen without
contact
Author : thunderbong
Score : 163 points
Date : 2024-07-30 09:32 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bristol.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bristol.ac.uk)
| lkuty wrote:
| Read an article posted on HN were they said it is static
| electricity that allows ticks to "jump" onto their host. Looks
| like it is used by a insects in various ways.
| debacle wrote:
| Not sure if I agree with that. Maybe nymphs? Adult ticks use
| their legs like velcro and make swimming motions in the air
| when they detect prey. How they detect prey has always
| interested me - it really gets them dancing.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| Here's the article -- it perhaps just increases the range of
| the ticks beyond what their legs can reach, since they can't
| jump. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36539253
| hatsuseno wrote:
| I'm not sure what kind of discussion could be had about the
| subject, but I just want to add: this is so cool.
| tocs3 wrote:
| To start a discussion:
|
| "This means that they don't even need to touch flowers in order
| to pollinate them,"
|
| So, the butterflies build up the charge as the fly around. Then
| they get near a flower and the pollen flies up and sticks to
| the butterfly. How does this pollinate other flowers? The
| pollen is stuck to the butterfly and not the flowers. Also, it
| seams it would mostly stick to the wings.
|
| Just curios. It is a pretty amazing world around us.
| _Microft wrote:
| From the paper[0] itself:
|
| ,,This pollen can then be deposited on subsequently visited
| flowers, either by direct contact, or similarly through
| electrostatic attraction, because the pollen can equalize to
| the potential of the pollinator, and will then experience an
| attractive force towards the electric field of the flower.
| Experimental evidence demonstrates this bidirectional
| electrostatic pollen transfer."
|
| [0] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2024.
| 015...
| fao_ wrote:
| Ahh, another case of "people on hacker news should read the
| article", I see! :)
|
| (i am guilty of this too lol)
| tocs3 wrote:
| The article did not have that line and I was curious. I
| claim innocence:)
|
| Now, though, I am interested in the electrostatic
| properties of the flowers.
| rflrob wrote:
| I always hesitate to ascribe motives to non-human animals,
| but the butterfly shouldn't particularly "care" whether the
| pollen gets from its body back to a plant. If the butterfly
| is eating the pollen, then maybe there's an advantage to
| hoovering up more just by getting close, but that doesn't
| mean it wants to give any pollen back to other plants.
|
| On the other hand, if the butterfly is eating the nectar and
| the pollination is an ancillary effect, then you have to
| start invoking more complicated mechanisms. Maybe successful
| pollination of the plants increases the food supply later?
| Maybe the flowers are not neutrally charged, but instead
| become oppositely charged when the pollen is ready to bias
| pollinators to come close at appropriate times? You can
| always construct some just-so story that fits the observed
| evidence, but where it becomes science is when you make
| predictions and test them.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The butterflies are adults that do not need to grow, they
| just need energy, so they normally eat only nectar. They
| have a mouth adapted for sucking liquids, which could not
| be used to eat solid food, like pollen.
|
| On the other hand, the bees collect both nectar and pollen.
| Nectar to provide energy for themselves (which they
| dehydrate into honey, which can be stored for a long time,
| unlike fresh nectar), and pollen, which is rich in
| proteins, to feed their larvae, which need to grow into
| adults.
| adolph wrote:
| I'm reading "The Light Eaters" which takes a broad look at
| plant behavior. It would not surprise me if the premise is
| inverted, that plants selected for electrostatically
| charged butterflies by selectively changing nectar
| availability.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| This book gets recommended a lot here but in case you missed
| it, An Immense World (2022) by Ed Yong contains a ton of
| examples of animals sensing the world differently than we do -
| including electrical sensors and different frame rates of
| acquisition. He doesn't address it but it calls into question
| in my mind many of the studies about consciousness in other
| animals that deny its existence, like the mirror test.
| taneq wrote:
| This reminds me of the recent(ish) discovery that flowers
| generate electrostatic fields that bees can sense and use to
| navigate to the flowers.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5599473/
| lawlessone wrote:
| It appears ballooning spiders also use static to help them become
| airborne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballooning_(spider)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Every time I come across a well made spider web, I always
| wonder how it started. How did the spider start here with the
| first thread and make it all the way to there? What's the algo
| the spider uses that determines the distances are not too far,
| or too far, or too small. Spider webs are impressive on so many
| levels.
| hammock wrote:
| Survivor bias
| lm28469 wrote:
| One day after getting out of my car I let the door open for
| some reason, I came back to it maybe 15 seconds later and a
| spider had placed a thread between the far side of the open
| door and the roof of the car (a bit less than a meter long I
| guess), I watched it do the round trip a few times wondering
| how the hell did it do the first pass.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| Usually they rely on wind to get the first thread across
| great distances. I often run into unfinished webs
| consisting of a single thread.
| kstenerud wrote:
| The first thought that pops into my head is butterflies with
| these tiny woolen socks...
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Similarly, female trees are charged to attract pollen to them. In
| most cities (in the US) trees planted on streets aren't allowed
| to be fruiting (because of rats?). Most fruitless/litterless
| trees are just the Dioecious male variety. This causes air
| quality issues as there is an over abundance of pollen in the
| air, which causes allergies and increased respiratory problems.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This suggests installation of electrostatic air cleaners,
| perhaps solar powered.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Or fake plastic trees.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Or planting more female trees and hiring cats to hunt rats?
| kurthr wrote:
| "I don't know why she swallowed a fly"
| ozim wrote:
| What do we do with cats? They breed too much as well.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Introduce a natural predator?
| willcipriano wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuiK7jcC1fY
| aziaziazi wrote:
| To much cats already, they hunt the birds that used to
| hunt mosquitos. Suburb tragedy.
| SkiFire13 wrote:
| Then genetically modify the mosquitos to prevent them
| from reproducing.
| wdh505 wrote:
| Evolution selects against this. You would have to release
| millions on a regular basis to consistently fight the
| "biological fitness" of self reproduction
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| Are they paid minimum wages? Is there diversity?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| She looks like the real thing
|
| She tastes like the real thing
|
| My fake plastic love
| lm28469 wrote:
| Infinitely complex solutions to self inflicted and completely
| trivial issues, humans are amazing!
| noah_buddy wrote:
| I think you may have missed the subtle joke in:
|
| > electrostatic air cleaners, perhaps solar powered
|
| AKA trees.
| pfdietz wrote:
| >.>
| loceng wrote:
| If only it wasn't impossible to design cities for streets
| to maintain tree cover to help air stay cooler near ground
| level, etc..
| barrenko wrote:
| Something something dog pee excerbates the number of male
| trees, also a HN fact.
| kazinator wrote:
| Static electricity was here long before life, so this is just
| something that the creatures evolved around.
|
| In related news, things are using capillary action to draw up
| water! Amazing!
| andai wrote:
| I can relate to the butterfly. Growing up I played a game where
| you had a dragonfly buddy who helped you collect many small gems.
| If your health got low you had to collect them manually which was
| a pain.
| fennecbutt wrote:
| Spyro the dragon
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| Does anyone understand the microscopic mechanism by which "flying
| through the air" lead to accumulating static electricity?
| burkaman wrote:
| > Any electrically insulated object, including an animal, is
| likely to accumulate charge as it moves through its
| environment, via a mechanism known as triboelectrification, or
| the triboelectric effect. The triboelectric effect describes
| the phenomenon wherein the separation of two materials formerly
| in contact with each other results in an anti-symmetrical
| deposition of charge on their surfaces. Whilst this effect is
| usually small, with repetition such as when rubbing two
| materials against each other, significant differences in charge
| can be created. The same principle applies to animals walking
| across and brushing past objects in their environment,
| including friction with the air when in flight.
|
| - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12804 (cited
| in the paper this post is about)
|
| From another citation:
|
| > The mechanism by which bees gain their charge, however, is
| not well understood.
|
| -
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00359-017-1176-6#...
|
| Apparently this happens to planes and helicopters too
| (https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-
| news/2019/november/f...).
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