ENST: How Animals Use Electricity
This article by our Editor
was published at
Evolution News on Dec. 5th.
Note: Our Editor, David Coppedge, has written many articles for other websites. Each weekend we intend to share some of those articles here at Creation-Evolution Headlines. “ENST” will be a prefix for articles our Editor has written for Evolution News & Science Today.
Since 2011, Mr. Coppedge has written well over 1,600 articles for Evolution News & Science Today, the news site for the Discovery Institute. Here is his latest article from December 5, 2024. The opening paragraphs will be shown, with a link to read the original. You can see a list of his articles under the “Writers” tab, but be aware that most of his articles before 2021 were posted without attribution, the source listed only as “Evolution News.”
Biological Information in Static Electricity
by David Coppedge
December 5, 2024
Insects and spiders know how to read the air when static electricity is present. Electrical charge, to them, is a source of biological information, says Daniel Robert in Current Biology in his Primer on “Aerial Electroreception.”
This newfound sensory modality reveals a previously unrecognised source of information, a new informational ecological niche integral to diverse life histories and navigational abilities, which remarkably involves animals, plants and atmospheric electricity. [Emphasis added.]
Arthropods live in an “electric ecology” where “electrostatics is everywhere, always, and all at once.” They come equipped with antennae and tiny hairs that are sensitive to the electrical environment. Sensing a charge, however, is only a part of the story. How do these organisms utilize the information? What does it tell them? How does it trigger a response?
Coulomb’s Law
In a brief review of electrostatics (as opposed to electrodynamics, which involves charges moving near the speed of light), Dr. Robert discusses electric fields and Coulomb’s Law — the principle that like charges repel and opposite charges attract. He notes that “electric fields are ubiquitous in the presence of matter.” He then links electrosensitive abiotic materials with electrosensitive biological materials….
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