TIL Earth's electric field can make spiders propel into the air and fly across entire oceans
Spiders fly on the currents of Earth's electric field
Spiders don’t have wings, but they can fly across entire oceans on long strands of silk. For more than a century, scientists thought it was the wind that carried them, sometimes as high as a jet stream — in a process known as “ballooning.” A new study shows that the Earth’s electric field can propel these flying spiders too.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, found that when spiders are in a chamber with no wind, but a small electric field, they are likely to prep for take-off, or even fly. Plus, the sensory hairs covering the spiders’ bodies move when the electric field is turned on — much like your own hair stands up due to static electricity. This “spidey sense” could be how the creatures know it’s time to fly.
This makes spiders only the second known arthropod species, after bees, to sense and use electric fields. Because humans don’t feel Earth’s electric field, its role in biology is often overlooked, said Erica Morley, the study’s lead author.
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There is evidence that the human brain can detect magnetic fields on an unconscious level, although it's far from settled science.
https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-other-animals-may-sense-earth-s-magnetic-field
I think it is entirely possible that we have vestigial magnetosensitivity from hundreds of millions of years ago. If that is so, however, it gives us the potential to redevelop it in the future.
There's also a way to fake it- people have made haptic "compasses," wearable devices like belts which vibrate north at all times. I remember reading many years ago about the first scientists to develop the technology and the first person (one of the scientists) to try it out, and he said that he was able to know where north was for a long time afterward.
I should say I was only talking about the first part when I meant faking it. We really don't know if wearing the device made him temporarily (I think it was temporary) magnetosensitive or if he just got so used to where north was in his daily routines that it was just memory.
I think we use it, just not consciously. It's not like knowing where north is helps much, but aligning your mental map of an area means a lot
Have you ever come out of a forest or something not where you expected, then had a moment of disorientation before everything snaps into place and you realize exactly where you are?
Agreed. I think when most people hear "able to sense magnetic fields", they think it means you can always point to North. It's more like being able to feel temperature or proprioception(your ability to sense where your body is). I think it's another dataset that gets added to our mental calculations, we just can't pinpoint that exact "sense" and use it actively.
I just got lost in a city while using Google Maps giving me walking directions. You are talking to the very wrong guy,
In your defense, walking with Google maps is extremely confusing. I almost always end up having to use it like a map and look for landmarks
That would explain my drunk human trick. You can get me drunk, blindfold me, and spin me in circles. I will then unerringly point to North. I always know where North is. Even when I'm rebooting after just waking up.
By any chance do you have a native Australian background? Apparently they don't have words for "left" and "right" but instead use cardinal directions, i. e. "My north hand." They have extremely good spatial navigation skills that are thought to be a result.
Nope. Aboriginal Australian is one of the few ethnicities that I'm not related to at all.
This makes spiders only the second known arthropod species, after bees, to sense and use electric fields.
But birds use the magnetic field to navigate, correct?
Because humans don’t feel Earth’s electric field, its role in biology is often overlooked.
Speaking of the magnetic field, there is purportedly an Aboriginal group in Australia that uses a subjective form of orientation terminology baked into their language or syntax, that forces their speakers to maintain an intricate and complex awareness of their surroundings and place in them.
Anyway... these people seem to be able to sense fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field, for example - they can tell when a solar storm is hitting the atmosphere.
Birds aren't arthropods. They're theropods.
Ah! My mind read everything but the "arthropods" bit, it got mentally nuked to vapor, processed "animals" in all the broad glory of the term.
