The man who walked butterflies on a leash

Summary

Unexplainable Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: The Man Who Walked Butterflies on a Leash
Release Date: May 19, 2025
Host/Author: Vox
Hosts: Noam Hassenfeld, Julia Longoria, Byrd Pinkerton, and Meredith Hoddinott

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Introduction

In this captivating episode of Unexplainable, hosted by Bird Fingerton and featuring biodiversity reporter Benji Jones, listeners are introduced to an intriguing study that bridges the gap between physics and entomology. The episode delves into the unconventional research conducted by sensory ecologist Sam England, who explores the hidden electrostatic interactions within the insect world.

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Meet Sam England: The Sensory Ecologist

Benji Jones begins by introducing Sam England, a sensory ecologist with a unique approach to studying insects. Sam's background in physics equips him with the tools to investigate how insects perceive their environment beyond human capabilities.

Benji Jones [01:18]: "I want to tell you about this guy I came across who has tied little leashes to butterflies and moths... like a dude with a real-life kite on the other end is walking them around a room."

Sam's innovative methods involve attaching tiny fishing line leashes to butterflies and moths to study their static electrical charges—a concept that initially seems odd but holds significant scientific promise.

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Research Methods: Walking Butterflies on a Leash

To understand whether butterflies and moths carry electrical charges that influence pollination, Sam developed a bespoke experimental setup. The core of his method involves:

1. Charging the Insects: Sam believed that the friction of insect wings against the air generates static electricity, similar to scuffing a balloon on hair.
2. Measuring the Charge: Using a device called a pico ammeter, Sam measures the electrical charge as insects pass through a metal loop.
3. Binding the Insects: For uncooperative butterflies and moths, Sam tied tiny lassos made from fishing line around their abdomens, allowing him to guide them through the measurement loop without causing harm.

Sam England [05:27]: "There's not really any kind of, like, prepackaged equipment that you can just buy... so a lot of our stuff had to be built bespokely."

This meticulous process enables Sam to quantify the subtle charges carried by these vital pollinators.

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Discoveries: Positive Charges and Pollination Dynamics

After extensive experimentation, Sam discovered that butterflies and moths carry, on average, a slight positive charge. While these charges are not strong enough to cause noticeable electric shocks, they are sufficient to influence pollen movement.

Benji Jones [15:39]: "The short answer is that they on average were positively charged... very, very subtle positive charges."

This finding suggests that electrostatic forces play a role in pollination, allowing pollen to be attracted and transported more efficiently between flowers. Even brief interactions, such as hovering near a flower, can result in pollen transfer without direct contact.

Sam England [16:21]: "Our study shows that it's not necessary [for pollen to make contact]. Even animals that only very briefly hover by a flower may still be able to attract pollen onto their bodies."

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Broader Implications: Electrostatic Interactions in Insects

Sam's research opens the door to understanding a myriad of electrostatic interactions in the insect world:

1. Bees Sensing Visited Flowers: Bees can detect changes in a flower's charge, indicating prior visitation by other bees, which influences their foraging behavior.

   Benji Jones [18:40]: "Bees, for example, can sense if a flower has been visited by another bee before because the charge has changed."

2. Caterpillars Detecting Predators: Some caterpillars can sense the electrostatic charge of approaching wasps, triggering defensive behaviors even without visual or olfactory cues.

   Sam England [19:46]: "He recreated the electrostatic charge of a predatory wasp, and the caterpillar responded as if there was a real wasp there."

These discoveries highlight an intricate, invisible layer of communication and interaction within ecosystems that was previously unrecognized.

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Human Impact: Disrupting the Electrostatic Ecology

While these electrostatic interactions are fascinating, Sam and the hosts discuss the potential negative impacts of human activities:

• Introduction of Artificial Charges: Human infrastructure, such as power lines and electrical appliances, introduces additional static electricity into the environment, potentially disrupting these natural interactions.

• Synthetic Materials: Materials like synthetic fibers in clothing and microplastics carry higher static charges compared to natural materials, altering the electrostatic landscape that insects rely on.

Sam England [22:05]: "We may have been unknowingly introducing another kind of environmental pollutant into the natural ecology of these animals."

This raises concerns about the unintended consequences of modern technology and materials on pollinator behavior and overall ecosystem health.

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Conclusion: The Importance of Unveiling Hidden Ecologies

The episode underscores the significance of understanding the full spectrum of sensory interactions in the natural world. Sam England's pioneering work demonstrates that there are still numerous aspects of ecology waiting to be uncovered, many of which may be crucial for the sustainability of ecosystems.

Benji Jones [20:50]: "We are only able to observe a sliver of the reality that we live in, and there's all this other stuff going on."

As research continues, it is imperative to consider how human-induced changes may be impacting these hidden ecological processes, emphasizing the need for innovative and creative scientific approaches.

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Final Thoughts

"The Man Who Walked Butterflies on a Leash" offers a mesmerizing glimpse into the uncharted territories of insect sensory ecology. Through inventive experimentation and a willingness to explore unconventional hypotheses, Sam England and the Unexplainable team shed light on the subtle yet profound ways in which electricity shapes the natural interactions that sustain our environment.

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For more intriguing explorations into the unknown, listen to Unexplainable on your preferred podcast platform every Monday and Wednesday.

Transcript

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[Bird Fingerton]

All right, Benji Jones, my favorite biodiversity reporter.

[Benji Jones]

Hi, bird.

[Bird Fingerton]

Hello. You have a story for me?

[Benji Jones]

I do. I want to tell you about this guy I came across who has tied little leashes to butterflies and moths. Like little leashes out of fishing line and taken for walks around his lab. And by walks, I mean little tiny flights. So like, imagine a dude with like a real life kite. On the other end is a butterfly and he's like, walking it around a room.

[Bird Fingerton]

This is so classic Benji. Okay, why is he doing this? Benji?

[Benji Jones]

Yeah, I get that this research seems kind of ridiculous, but he's doing this strange, very odd research because he thinks it'll help us understand something that's actually pretty fundamental about how the insect world works. And more specifically, about how insects might be interacting with a part of the world that's totally invisible to humans.

[Bird Fingerton]

All right, Benji. I'm hooked. I'm compelled. I will follow where you lead. Where do you want to start?

[Benji Jones]

Let's start with this guy, Sam England. He's a sensory ecologist. Meaning he, like, studies the way that insects sense their environment. And actually, when I. Very cool job. And when I, when I reached him, he was working on a project where he was studying spider vision and was like, putting spiders on a little treadmill in like, a virtual reality environment to understand how they respond to different stimuli. So it was, yeah, crazy job, the wrong job.

[Bird Fingerton]

Benji.

[Benji Jones]

I know, completely like, I want to be playing with spiders. But, yeah, butterflies unleashes. So for his PhD, he was studying how static electricity affects the insect world. So Static electricity. This is basically the buildup of electric charges.

[Bird Fingerton]

So, like, when I rub a balloon, right. Or like when I shuffle around on a carpet and get a shock because I touch something. Right. That's static electricity.

[Benji Jones]

That's exactly right. So, like, we notice static electricity in these small ways, right? Like getting shocks here and there. I also think about, like, when you open a package and there's a bunch of, like, styrofoam pellets and they, like, cling to your body, that's also about static electricity. And so this is what Sam is investigating just in insects.

[Sam England]

It's quite a funny thing to try to measure the static charge on an animal. There's not a whole load of people that want to do this.

[Bird Fingerton]

Why did he want to do this?

[Benji Jones]

So basically, there's been some work that suggests that insects might be using static electricity in a bunch of these invisible ways. And one way would be pollination. So if we go back for a second to the static electricity thing, where packing peanuts are flying towards you and sticking to you when you open a package, what's happening there is that static electricity involves a buildup of charge. So, like you and the packing peanuts, one of you is slightly positively charged, one is slightly negatively charged, and so the peanuts are attracted to you.

[Bird Fingerton]

Sure.

[Benji Jones]

And so this might actually be happening with pollination, too. But instead of peanuts and people, you have pollen and insects.

[Bird Fingerton]

Okay.

[Benji Jones]

So pollen on flowers seems to have, at least in some cases, a slightly negative charge. And so what Sam wanted to figure out is whether butterflies and moths, these incredibly important pollinators, potentially are positively charged. And if they are, that could mean that pollen is not just, like, brushing up against their bodies and sticking to them, but actually, like, flying through the air when they get close enough to a flower. Just like the tiny packing peanuts are flying towards your body as you open up whatever you're exciting package is. And if he finds out that they are positively charged and this interaction is occurring, and this could, like, open up this whole other dimension to pollination, to this thing that is really important to nature and to how we get our food. But to figure out if this is happening, Sam had to find a way to measure the charge on butterflies.

[Sam England]

There's not really any kind of, like, prepackaged equipment that you can just buy off, you know, Amazon or wherever to measure the static charge of an animal. So a lot of our stuff had to built bespokely, which is what led.

[Benji Jones]

Him to turning butterflies into, like, these little living kites in his lab. Basically, Sam thought that insects Might be picking up positive charges when they're flying around. Like, that's how they charge up. Like, the friction of their wings against the air might be, like, the equivalent to us scooting along the carpet and then, like, touching the doorknob and getting a shock, so building up charge. And so he needed to get these moths and butterflies to fly around.

[Bird Fingerton]

Okay.

[Benji Jones]

And then after he flew them, he also needed to find a way to measure whether they'd become charged.

[Sam England]

For this study, we relied really heavily on a bit of equipment called a pico amter.

[Benji Jones]

Imagine, like a kind of a metal loop. And the idea is that the electrical charge of what passes through the loop can be measured. And so his task, his challenge, where the leash comes in, is that he needed to get the butterflies and the moths through that loop.

[Bird Fingerton]

Wait, wait, wait. So it's not just that he's walking his butterflies around his lab on a leash. He's literally having them fly through little loops like a. Like a tiny butterfly circus.

[Benji Jones]

It's very dog show vibes, logistically, is this.

[Bird Fingerton]

Like, it sounds both simple and also when I try to imagine attaching a little leash to a butterfly. Like, how.

[Benji Jones]

Okay, yeah, no, these are.

[Bird Fingerton]

How is he doing this?

[Benji Jones]

Okay, so basically, two approaches.

[Sam England]

With some of the species, this was actually quite easy. What I could do was I could basically put the butterfly in a box, and we lined this box with leaves so that the butterflies and moths were only making contact with a material that they would contact in their natural ecology, that is a leaf, you know, as they're flying around, landing on leaves, landing on flowers. So we should get an ecologically relevant measurement of their charge. So for some of the species, we basically placed the butterfly in a box, and we left a tiny hole big enough for the butterfly or moth to fly out of. And a lot of butterflies and moths just like to go towards light. And essentially, when the butterfly emerged from the box, we could have this concentric ring sensor mounted near the hole in that box, and the butterfly would fly straight through the loop, and we would get a measurement of that butterfly or moths charge.

[Benji Jones]

That's like the simple version. If you can get the butterflies to fly out of the box through this loop. A lot of butterflies and moths were not cooperative. So for the butterflies and moths that wouldn't fly out on their own, he basically had to get them to fly.

[Sam England]

We actually had to basically tie tiny lassoes made from fishing line around their abdomen. So we could tie a slipknot of fishing line around the abdomen of these butterflies and moths, which is completely removable afterwards. And some people, not me, had a much better aptitude for doing it. I must admit that I had this one colleague, Tom Neal, that I would come and bother every few days and say, I've got a few more moths and butterflies for you. Ta lessu for me.

[Bird Fingerton]

Does it hurt the butterflies?

[Benji Jones]

No. It's a good question. Like, there's really no way to know definitively. But Sam said probably not. And the butterflies seemed fine after his study, and he'd often release them back into the wild. And he also mentioned that, like, to. To do this, he would knock out the butterflies using CO2. It would, like, temporarily, like, knock them out, and then a few minutes later, they would wake up. And then to get them to fly, he just had to, like, kind of pull up the leash so they were dangling. And when butterflies are dangling and don't have their feet on the ground, they just, like, instinctively start flapping their wings because they're like, oh, God, I'm in the air, I need to be flying. And the butterflies would start flying.

[Sam England]

And it's quite fun because once they start flying, you're basically walking them around, like taking a dog for a walk. And it was even more. I don't know what the word would even be. Surreal, probably. Like, sometimes it felt like a bit of a fever dream, especially given that my background is in physics, and I never really imagined that I would be taking butterflies for a walk. But I used to kind of fly them around the lab on their leash. And the lab that I worked in at the time had a huge glass front to one side of the lab, and this glass front faced straight onto the main corridor that most of the undergraduate students would walk along to get to the library. So very regularly I was walking or flying these butterflies around the lab, and undergrads would stare through the window at me and probably think, what on earth is happening in there? But, yeah, definitely probably came across like a bit of a mad scientist.

[Benji Jones]

The ultimate goal is to get them to go through this loop to measure their charge. But he wanted to give them enough time to fly a little bit so that they would be picking up a charge like they would in the wild when they're flying from flower to flower. And so he flew them around the lab for a minimum of 30 seconds. And then his goal is to get them to stop flying so that he can just drop them through the loop. So in some cases, they would not stop flying. They're like really, like, tenacious fliers, really persistent fliers. And so what he would do is he would actually play the sound, the ultrasonic sound of bats. And bats are predators for a lot of moths. And so these moths would instinctively stop flying when they heard the sound of bats. As like an. As a way to like immediately dodge an incoming bat. And so it's like a defense mechanism. Exactly. They'd freeze in the air, stop flying, and then they'd be dangling on this leash. And then he could put the leash through the loop and measure the charge of the butterflies.

[Bird Fingerton]

Okay, so, so the moths, the butterflies, they like freeze, they fall through this little loop. It measures their charge. What did he find? Like, did he find that they were charged or not?

[Benji Jones]

Oh, I will tell you all about it after the break. Break. It's gonna be after that. Here comes a break. I'll tell you after the break.

[Bird Fingerton]

Screaming.

[Benji Jones]

I'm screaming. Break, break, break, break, break. It's cyber. Flap those wings and wait till the break is over. Oh, is that funny?

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[Bird Fingerton]

All right, so before the break, Sam was flying butterflies around and pulling them through hoops to see if they were charged up. What did he find?

[Benji Jones]

The the short answer is that they on average were positively charged. So like what he was hypothesizing that these are positively charged turned out to be true. On the whole, like some there was a lot of variation. He said some were like a little bit neg. But in general he saw positive charges. To be clear, these are not like massive charges that like if you touched the butterfly, you're going to get a shock. These are like very, very subtle positive charges. But the key here is that the difference between the butterfly and the pollen According to these models that he made, is enough to cause pollen to be attracted to their bodies and jump through space.

[Sam England]

Of course, often when insects visit flowers, they will actually just make contact with the pollen. So probably that's still the main mechanism by which pollen is attached onto pollinators is through physical contact. But what our study shows is that it's not necessary. And even animals that only very briefly hover by a flower may still be able to attract pollen onto their bodies and then subsequently take that pollen to another flower and pollinate that flower.

[Bird Fingerton]

Wow. So are they. Does that mean that butterflies and moths and maybe other insects are, like, potentially experiencing, like, tiny electric shocks, like, every time they interact with pollen?

[Benji Jones]

Yeah, I asked him that question and.

[Sam England]

He said, no, it's not high enough for that. It really, it's quite a small charge.

[Benji Jones]

He said, like, they're not getting shocked every time they get near a flower, because if they were, it's likely that, like, this would not be beneficial and, like, would be evolved out or, like, adapted away or whatever. But he said that it's likely that pollen can jump like several millimeters, if not like a centimeter or more, depending on how positively charged the butterfly is. So, like, if you did look really closely at the interaction between a butterfly and the flower, you might see pollen move through space almost like a magnet that you throw on to a fridge or something like that.

[Bird Fingerton]

I'm tossing my magnets in my refrigerator.

[Benji Jones]

I know when I wrote that, I'm like, oh, that's a great analogy. And I'm like, in what situation are you, like, do you have a centimeter between you and the magnet and the fridge? But it's like you casually walked by your refrigerator about a millimeter away and had a magnet and it flung to the fridge. Okay, we're canceling the magnet analogy.

[Bird Fingerton]

Okay. So it seems like these insects are lightly, positively charged. Are they just pulling up pollen, or are there other kind of electrostatic things out in the world that insects might be interacting with? I guess. Or are there other things that these insects could be doing with this electrostatic energy?

[Benji Jones]

Yes, There are so many cool ways that electrostatic energy is, like, shaping the insect world. Like, when I was reading about this, it was really, there were some mind blowing examples. So, like, bees, for example, can sense if a flower has been visited by another bee before because, like, the charge has changed. Yes, because the charge is different. And so they might avoid a flower because it has a charge that indicates that it was just visited.

[Bird Fingerton]

Okay.

[Benji Jones]

And then the other thing, and this came from, from Sam's research. His research suggests that some caterpillars that get preyed on or eaten by wasps are, like, able to detect if a wasp is approaching by sensing their positive or negative charge. And when the wasp approaches, the caterpillar will curl up in anticipation of an attack. And so it does this defensive posturing because it senses the electrostatic energy of the approaching wasp.

[Bird Fingerton]

Did he just, like, put wasps on a string and like, dangle them over the caterpillars?

[Benji Jones]

He actually recreated, like, the electrostatic charge of a wasp, of a predatory wasp, and looked at what happened to the caterpillar and the caterpillar, like, responded as if there was a real wasp there.

[Bird Fingerton]

So, so he knew it was just like, it literally. It couldn't have been the smell of the wasp or, like, exactly. Infrasonic wasp sounds or something. It literally must have been the charge.

[Benji Jones]

Yeah, and I think, like, it's probably worth saying here that, like, this is a lot of this work is really new and so there aren't like, tons of studies showing this over and over again. And so, like, everything should be taken with like, a little bit of a grain of salt. But yeah, that is what his, his paper showed.

[Bird Fingerton]

I sort of thought you were, you were overselling it maybe when you were saying that there's like, you know, a whole invisible force or whatever happening out here. But it does, it really does sound like potentially there's this electrostatic world that insects are interacting with on a, on a fairly regular basis that we're, we're not really aware of.

[Benji Jones]

Yeah. And like, that is what I love so much about this kind of research. And like, I have chills right now just thinking about it because it's like, yeah, it's, it's like a different sense. It's like a sense that we don't use, don't need. But that doesn't mean that, like, it's not really important to other creatures. And I find it, like, pretty humbling to just think that, like, we are only able to observe a sliver of, like, the reality that we live in and there's all this other stuff going on.

[Bird Fingerton]

So how do we, I guess, how do researchers like Sam figure out what's going on? Like, what do they need to figure out next to sort of explore this literal hidden world.

[Benji Jones]

Yeah. So, like, part of it is designing super weird experiments, like trying to meet insects where they're at and like, develop ways to study how they experience the world. So, like, that's where tying leashes to butterflies comes in. I would Say, like the. The. One of the frontiers of this research is trying to understand how we humans and our infrastructure, our buildings, our power lines, are affecting all these interactions.

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Oh, no.

[Sam England]

Yeah. As exciting and fun as these discoveries are, it may also be a little bit alarming because we're realizing that there are these hidden forces, this secret influence of static electricity that's actually maybe playing perhaps a significant role in quite a few different ecological interactions. The problem is we as humans introduce so much static electricity into the environment. So whether this is from things like power lines or our electrical appliances, but also, you know, a lot of artificial materials, like a lot of our synthetic fibers that our clothes are made of, charge up a lot more than natural materials do. Or, or if we think about even, for example, microplastics and nanoplastics, like, these materials charge up a lot. And this means that we may have been unknowingly introducing another kind of environmental pollutant into the natural ecology of these animals.

[Benji Jones]

So I think, like, all of the senses that animals use to like, live their lives, whether it's like sight or even like sensing the Earth's magnetic field or electrostatic energy, like, all of those senses are disrupted in some ways by our infrastructure, by human things. When I was talking to Sam, he was saying that even just trying to do these experiments in the confines of his lab were difficult because there were so much interference from the building itself, the plugs on the wall, whatever. And when you're trying to measure really small changes in charge, it's like you have to get rid of that noise. And that's what Sam is super interested in understanding next.

[Sam England]

It's something that I'm very passionate about now trying to pursue is, this is super cool, this is super exciting, but we really need to quickly gain an understanding of how we as humans might be interfering with this electrostatic ecology.

[Benji Jones]

Man.

[Bird Fingerton]

I have to admit, Benji, I really. When you led with like, I'm. I spoke to a researcher who tied butterflies to leashes. I really did not think that you were going to sell me on it to this degree. Like, to the point where I'm like, give Sam more funding for research. Tie more butterflies to leashes. I want more answers here, dude.

[Benji Jones]

Well, first of all, like, what did you expect? I'm not gonna bring you trash. But yeah, I don't know. I guess, like, it is, it's. It's another reminder that, like, it often takes a lot of creativity and like, these bespoke experiments to. To answer important questions, like the methods might be dumb sounding. The methods might be goofy, they might sound kind of dumb, but, like, ultimately, they're chipping away at something very important to all of us.

[Bird Fingerton]

Benji Jones, folks, our biodiversity reporter. He's literally constantly writing pieces like this on our website. So you should read his work. This episode was produced by me, Bird Fingerton. It was edited by Jorge Just. Meredith Hodnot runs our show. Noam Hassenfeld made the music for this episode. Christian Ayala did the mixing and the sound design. Melissa Hirsch checked the facts. Julia Longoria is the fact that frogs have been making sounds for 180 million years. And I'm always grateful to Brian Resnik for co creating the show. Meanwhile, Benji and I are always, always, always on the lookout for weird science that actually serves really interesting purposes like this leash butterfly experiment. So if you know of weird science like this, or if you're doing weird science like this, even better, Write in@ unexplainableox.com you could also leave us a nice review or a rating if you're so inclined. Or join our membership program that helps immensely. Vox.com members, that is vox.com members. But either way, thanks for listening. And Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast network and we will be back on Wednesday.