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Thursday, November 24, 2005

 

Electric fish may jam rivals’ signals

`For the first time, researchers say, they’ve found an electric fish sabotaging another fish’s electric signals.

The brown ghost knifefish (Apteronotus leptorhynchus) generates a weak electric field that it uses to detect obstacles and to communicate with other knifefish. When confronting a rival knifefish, both males and females can raise the frequency of their own electric signals close enough to the other fish’s to distort its electric field, reports Sara Tallarovic of the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. In previous experiments, such jamming blinded fish-guidance systems.’

Strange fish, strange university name.




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