Malapterurus beniensis may look like a harmless catfish lounging on the bottom of a tank, but these creatures are far from benign. Packing a powerful 300 V electric shock, the fish usually reserve their pyrotechnics for stunning prey. ‘We always wear thick rubber gloves when handling the fish’, chuckles Stefan Schuster from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, admitting that he and Georg Welzel once tried holding a small catfish without gloves: ‘The shock was surprisingly strong and felt like touching an electric fence’, he recalls. But how do electric catfish withstand their self-administered shocks, which knock out the hearts and nervous systems of their victims? Do the catfish brace themselves to withstand their own electrical discharges, or are they somehow immune? Intrigued by the fish’s electrical resilience, Schuster and Welzel obtained two of the shocking creatures to find out how they and their victims deal with an electric jolt.
Learn about our two Decals!
Click here to find out more about our Fall Bioinspired Design Decal and our Spring Bioinspired Design in Action Decal – ALL MAJORS are welcome.Berkeley BioDesign Community
Click here to learn about the BioD: Bio-Inspired Design @ Berkeley student organization or here to signup for more info.
I imagine that the neurological circuits underlying these processes are governed by both 2d spacing maps with their brains as…
to reduce the impact of car accidents, it may be possible to study the force diverting physics of cockroaches to…
you see this type of head-bobbing stability in many avian creatures related to pigeons like chickens. the head ability to…
not like they taught horses how to run! this is an example of convergent evolution where both sea creatures and…
The brain functions in a similar way with neuronal connections. our brains are able to utilize the multiplicity of connections…