Electric Fish pt. I – They can talk!
“Electric fish?” you might say, shrug, and think about a glow-in-the-dark goldfish for the bedside table or a radio controlled robofish. But that would be far off!
You might know that there’s the electric eel. It can zap and stun prey with up to 800V and – this is much more creepy – it can use its electrical power to control prey animals like a puppet player. Make them twitch, say, when they’re hiding. Shocking, eh?
However, this article is also not about the electric eel! At least not about that creepy zapping power of theirs, so just forget about that (or if you don’t, read this article to go further down that rabbit hole). This article is about weakly electric fish. Where the electric eel can use strong electric discharges like a weapon, these fish generate weak electric discharges to sense their surroundings and communicate with each other! Actually, the electric eel also generates these weak discharges for the same reason, they’re only much less popular, for an obvious reason.
Weakly electric fish thrive in many tropical freshwater systems in South- and Middle America and Africa. They mostly hunt small crustaceans and insects and are important links in the food chain: non-vertrebrates >> small fish >> large predators. So, they are neither very rare nor ecologically irrelevant (which animal is?). But why haven’t you heard of them before? The answer is, probably, because we know shockingly little about aquatic ecology altogether. It is a phrase that has been recited so often that it has become a platitude, but it is true: we know more about the moon than about our oceans.
A brief claim to fame: the African Elephant nose fish (Gnathonemus petersii) as it was featured in the Weird n Wild creatures knowledge card set that was published by International Masters Publishers, Inc. from 2003 to 2010. 
A brief claim to fame: the African Elephant nose fish (Gnathonemus petersii) as it was featured in the Weird n Wild creatures knowledge card set that was published by International Masters Publishers, Inc. from 2003 to 2010.
Although we don’t know a lot yet, weakly electric fish may help us to understand a tiny little bit more about tropical freshwater systems – some of the most diverse and precious ecosystems that still exist on this planet. The main reason for this is: we can tap into their electrical signals! That means, we can detect them in a murky pond. Try doing that with any other fish without using a car battery or dip nets! We can also record their behavior: interactions, communication and movement.
I got to know weakly electric fish while doing my master’s thesis research in biology and have since continued to discover so many things about fish behavior, animal communication, and, yes, physics. In this miniseries, I want to give you a brief insight into what kind of animals weakly electric fish are, what opportunities there are in researching them, and how this might contribute to a better understanding, and higher appreciation, of aquatic ecology.
If this caught your attention and you want to know more, follow the upcoming articles in this miniseries. For a start, you can check out this poster with the most important information.
