EAR01

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT.

We live in a world full of electric fields. Animals, plants — even the Earth itself — create them. But only a handful of creatures can actually sense them. Sharks, rays, and skates — a whole group of animals called elasmobranchs — can detect electricity. Maybe it’s like feeling the presence of someone hiding in a dark room, a different way of experiencing their world, an extra sense that we don’t have. And for sharks and rays, it’s an extra edge for finding their prey.

The discovery of this exceptional sense dates back three hundred years — long before the discovery of electricity — to a man named Stefano Lorenzini. Lorenzini was a doctor with a passion for anatomy, who one day found himself dissecting a ray. That’s when he noticed the strangest thing: tiny pores that dotted the ray’s skin. He drew a picture showing how each pore led to a tube full of goo, and each tube ended in a little pouch. Those little round pouches reminded him of ancient Roman flasks called ampullae, so that’s what he named them. But when it came to the function of those ampullae, Lorenzini was stumped.

Three hundred years later, we’re still figuring out exactly how electroreception works, and a big part of that is studying what creates these electrical fields in the first place. Every time a fish opens its mouth to breathe, it exposes its mucus membranes to the salty water, creating a tiny voltage that disappears every time the mouth closes. At Florida Atlantic University, scientists are able to measure this phenomenon. That repeating on–off pattern is an electric frequency carried easily through salt water — two hertz, two breaths a second.

Stingrays can tune in to that same frequency like a radio channel. Take a close look at a stingray and you can see those pores. They lead to long canals that cluster together. When an electric charge enters a pore, it travels through the highly conductive gel in the canal to the ampulla, where special cells detect the current and send a message along nerves to the brain. That’s how stingrays can spot prey hidden beneath them, even though their eyes are on top of their heads.

But the ampullae aren’t just for hunting. Pores on the ray’s back also let it know if someone is trying to sneak up on it from behind. Researchers place diodes on the floor of a tank, replicating the same electric frequency as a breathing fish. They flip the current from circle to circle, and the ray strikes at the active target.

Maybe by studying how this sense works, we can learn better ways to coexist with these ancient creatures — find new ways to keep them out of our nets and away from our surfers. Of course, none of this really explains what it’s like to feel electricity. Is it as simple as flipping a switch on and off, or as varied and subtle as smell or taste? A whole spectrum of experiences hidden to the rest of us.