Gregory P. Sutton and his team at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom have tested the ability to detect weak electric fields by Bumblebees. The researchers used a needle carrying a voltage of 400V with a sin wave and placed it 2 mm away from the bumblebee's body hairs. With the help of a camera and a Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV), they recorded the movement generated by the needle over the hairs. The team of scientists also used a disk with a voltage of 30 V to simulate the electric field produced by flowers, and they discovered that the mechanical response could be model as a Coulomb force between the object and the haires. The experiment helps to establish how the bumblebees and other insects use the weak electric fields as a guiding system.
credit Gregory Sutton, Dom Clarke, Erica Morley, and Daniel Robert.References
- Sutton, G. P., Clarke, D., Morley, E. L., & Robert, D. (2016). Mechanosensory hairs in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) detect weak electric fields Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(26), 7261-7265.