Aquila Children's Magazine The Electric Issue | Page 13

IN RIVERS AND LAKES
Electric eel
Did you know the electric eel
(Electrophorus electricus) isn’t actually an
eel at all? It is actually a type of knife
fish! Living throughout the Amazon
basin, these are some of the most
infamous electric animals, capable of
generating extremely high electric
shocks to stun or even kill their prey.
Electric eels have thousands of
electrocytes in their thick muscular tails
all lined up like batteries in a torch. They
can grow to well over 2 m in length and
can generate over 600 volt bursts –
that’s 50 times the shocking power of a
car battery!
Elephantnose fish
Despite its name, that is not its nose –
it’s actually an elongated chin! This
specialised organ is called the
Schnauzenorgan (pronounced
shh-now-zen-organ – what a word! Ed)
and it is covered in tiny electroreceptors
to detect prey hiding deep in the silty
river bed.
This isn’t the only trick up the
elephantnose’s… erm… sleeve (chin
– please stop mixing up body parts,
ed). It has a specially adapted muscle
near its tail that it can use to produce a
weak electric field. With this, the fish
can sense movement in the water
around them and navigate their way
home in total darkness. They also use
their electrical abilities to
communicate and find a mate.
But it’s not just fish that have
mastered the use of
electricity…..
Did you know the platypus
(Ornithorhynchus anatinus) can hunt
with precision at night with their eyes,
ears and nostrils closed? How they do
this remained a mystery and baffled
scientists for many years. Upon closer
inspection it was discovered that a
platypus’ duck-like bill is covered in
nearly 40,000 electroreceptors. These
are arranged in a series of stripes to
help it hone in on its prey whilst
digging in the bottom of streams.
Deep
This organ is so sensitive it allows the
elephantnose fish (Gnathonemus
petersii) to tell the difference between
living and dead bugs buried up to 2 cm
deep. They live in gloomy rivers and
have such poor eyesight that they can
also use the Schnauzenorgan to
determine distance, material and the
shape and size of an object – now that’s
a clever nose (sorry, chin, ed)!
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