Meryl Horne

So I asked her, do we know of any organism that can directly sense the changes from the moon's gravity?

Oh, yes.

Who uses it?

I mean, you mean not, obviously, tidal changes.

Not being jostled by the tides, yeah, but like directly sensing the moon's gravity.

Directly sensing it.

I am not aware of something like this.

So, yeah, the case for gravity, I'd say, is pretty weak.

Much like the gravitational force of the moon on us.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, there's one other thing.

So the Earth has this super cool magnetic field around it.

And as the moon revolves around the Earth, it seems to, like, mess with this field.

And we do know that some animals can sense the Earth's magnetic field.

We know organisms like migratory birds.

And it's actually not only birds, also butterflies sense the magnetic field, right?

And the way we think that they're doing this is through this protein called cryptochrome.

Okay, so yeah, cryptochrome is a protein in our bodies that can interact with the magnetic fields, and it seems to be helping the birds know which direction to fly.

We do.

We do have a version of cryptochrome.