When the animals went electric

S.In the NE moment, Flounder is located on the sandy bottom of the ocean, and the following time disappears in the bloody frenzy of the shark dinner. The shark did not see or hear the fish. It has been identified from the infinite electrical signals of the flour’s heart.

This is called Electroreception. Shark fish are allowed to locate the electric fields from a few feet using sensory organs in their skin.

Chris Brown, who is studying the sensory systems of animals at Hunter College in New York, says the salt sign raises “a small tremor in the shark’s brain.” “The estimate of how sharks zeros is on the bankrupt.

Electroreception is an additional feeling, not an alternative. The sharks hear well, have a good vision, and the smell of blood in water can be smelled from a quarter of miles. But within a few feet, electronic is the feeling. You don’t want to challenge a shark to a hide and strive game.

Paddelefish electronic is very sensitive so that plankton can be discovered.

When the researchers put a pole that generates electricity near a dead fish, they discovered that sharks tried to eat the pole. It is also possible to explain the electricity as well Shark fish chew underwater cablesIncluding internet cables via channels that provide globally Communication.

Electorexption is found in fresh and salt water, and some amphibians, such as AXolotl, and even a few mammals, such as mixed cells, which contain electrical receptors on their bill, and echidna, whose electric nose sticks in water or wet soil. the Guyana Dolphin It has electrical receptors on the sap. This additional meaning is everything about evolutionary and savings.

IN 1678, during the dissection of the Torbid beam, the Italian doctor and an impact specialist, Stefano Lorenzini, discovered the sensory organs of the skin that discovers the electronic, which he described as an outstretched pores filled with gels, which are now known as ampullae of Lorenzini or ampullary. But Lorenzini did not understand what this amplip was. Since then, scientists have collected how the sensors developed and how animals use them.

An insight into the electron from research to another sensory system in aquatic animal: “side lines”. These receptors contain the skin along both sides of the fish or amphibians on the cells of the movement sensor, which were called the hair -like bumps on the outer surface of the cell, which the fish use to sensitize movement, vibrations and pressure changes in the water. These hair cells are similar to our inner ear, and they work similarly: just as the audio wave pushes Endolymph liquid inside our inner ear to fold or move hair cells, as well as water stir the hair cells in the side lines of fish.

The side line system extends to the bottom of the fish body, but electronic receptors primarily on the head, often concentrated near the mouth. From the surface, it looks like drilling or pores, but it extends depth several inches away in the fish body, and comes out of the hook like a bowl from cooked spaghetti. The walls of the canal are secreted by the gel that runs the electricity to the hair cell similar to how the silicone performs electricity in the computer chips. This is the way the shark senses the bankrupt heartbeat below the sand.

The similarities between the side line and electronic receptors system led to the assumption that the latter has evolved from the first. Depending on the similarities in which the cranial nerves are connected to the side line and electronic receptors, the electrical infections are likely to develop for the first time in some common fish ancestors, and then, some of the most common fish – including catfish, tuna and salmon.

You don’t want to challenge a shark to a hide and strive game.

In the animals you possess, the weak weakness has evolved to be selective. Weak electric fields are not transmitted in the air, but water environments are full of them. Even electronic animals do not imagine all the electric fields in water. Litch explains that this will be loud and overwhelming, and thus receptors are designed with low -lower frequencies related to the specified species, such as the frequencies that emit prey.

It is striking that the electron has been re -expanded at least twice in the fish whose ancestors had previously lost. “Sensory systems take a lot of energy,” says Lech. “Therefore, if the animal does not get an advantage, and uses some other senses such as smell or vision more, there will be less pressure to maintain electronic and at the end it will become non -functional.” At some point, they lost knife fish and cyanosis, and then redefined.

To shed light on this additional system, Claire Baker, a professor in the Physiology Department of Cambridge University, Development, and Neuroscience, studying the embryos of electric fish. In 2017, Baker focused on paddleThose who have a very sensitive Electrorexpility that they discover the electric fields caused by the small animal plankton that feed on it.

Electroreception is created in rowing fish from a thick skin on the head of the fetus called Placodes, a layer of cells that contribute to the development of the senses. Baker and his colleagues explain that mammal’s inner ear cells (critical to our hearing and balance) develop of the same type of dodging. “Genes whose identity has not been determined will help regulate whether the hair cell or electronic receptors are developing,” says Baker.

Scientists say, Electroxpility provides a new view of how to develop from “reserved mechanisms”, as scientists say, genetic processes related to animals from rowing fish to our back cells. But for sharks, Electroreception is just better possibilities to secure dinner.

Lead Image: Vin / Shutterstock

• Severin Wegannhin

  Spread on March 17, 2025

  Severin WiggenHorn is a writer based in Seattle, Washington.

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