An electric fish is a fish that can generate electric fields. It is said to be electrogenic; a fish that has the ability to detect electric fields is said to be electroreceptive. Most electrogenic fish are also electroreceptive. Electric fish species can be found both in the sea and in freshwater rivers of South America (Gymnotiformes) and Africa (Mormyridae). Many fish such as sharks, rays and catfishes can detect electric fields, and are thus electroreceptive, but as they cannot generate an electric field they are not classified as electric fish. Most common bony fish (teleosts), including most fish kept in aquaria or caught for food, are neither electrogenic nor electroreceptive.
Read more about Electric Fish: Strongly and Weakly Electric Fish, Species
Famous quotes containing the words electric and/or fish:
“That’s the down-town frieze,
Principally the church steeple,
A black line beside a white line;
And the stack of the electric plant,
A black line drawn on flat air.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“When the weather is bad as it was yesterday, everybody, almost everybody, feels cross and gloomy. Our thin linen tents—about like a fish seine, the deep mud, the irregular mails, the never to-be-seen paymasters, and “the rest of mankind,” are growled about in “old-soldier” style. But a fine day like today has turned out brightens and cheers us all. We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)