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An electric fish generates an electric field using an electric organ, modified from muscles in its tail. The field is called weak if it is only enough to detect prey, and strong if it is powerful enough to stun or kill. The field may be in brief pulses, as in the elephantfishes, or a continuous wave, as in the knifefishes.
Electric organ discharges are two types, pulse and wave, and vary both by species and by function. Electric fish have evolved many specialised behaviours. The predatory African sharptooth catfish eavesdrops on its weakly electric mormyrid prey to locate it when hunting, driving the prey fish to develop electric signals that are harder to detect.
These fibres signal the size of the detected electric field to the fish's brain. [14] The ampulla contains large conductance calcium-activated potassium channels (BK channels). Sharks are much more sensitive to electric fields than electroreceptive freshwater fish, and indeed than any other animal, with a threshold of sensitivity as low as 5 nV/cm.
Magnetoreception is a sense which allows an organism to detect the Earth's magnetic field. Animals with this sense include some arthropods, molluscs, and vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals). The sense is mainly used for orientation and navigation, but it may help some animals to
Sharks use the ampullae of Lorenzini to detect the electromagnetic fields that all living things produce. [25] This helps sharks (particularly the hammerhead shark) find prey. The shark has the greatest electrical sensitivity of any animal. Sharks find prey hidden in sand by detecting the electric fields they produce.
In biology, the electric organ is an organ that an electric fish uses to create an electric field. Electric organs are derived from modified muscle or in some cases nerve tissue , called electrocytes, and have evolved at least six times among the elasmobranchs and teleosts .
At one point or another, we’ve all experienced the unexpected, intense pain of a muscle cramp. Muscle cramps, also known as muscle spasms or charley horses, are the involuntary contraction of ...
For example, a horse can sniff the air to detect pheromones but a fish which is surrounded by water will need a different method to detect chemicals. Aquatic animals can communicate through various signal modalities including visual, auditory, tactile, chemical and electrical signals. Communication using any of these forms requires specialised ...