Electroreceptors and Electrosensing

Abstract

Sense organs with a specialized sensitivity to very feeble electric fields in the water are found in most nonteleost fish (except hagfish and holosteans) and in four orders of teleosts, widely scattered in the skin and innervated by special branches of the lateral line nerves. They can be designated electroreceptors based on evidence that they respond to naturally occurring electric currents of obvious biological significance to the organism and that they are the necessary mediators of normal behavioral responses to electrical events. Some electroreceptors are quite sensitive, phasically, to temperature change and poorly sensitive to mechanical pressure on the skin, but to what degree these sensibilities are due to electric consequences is not known.