#electric catfish

[nemfrog]

Electric catfish. Electrical Experimenter. May 1917.

Internet Archive

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #577

Electric catfish!

This family of catfish has well-developed electrogenic organs, as in organs that generate electric fields! They can generate as much as 350 volts of electricity, and they were occasionally used by ancient Egyptians to reduce arthritis pain!

[twotriickhoofbea2t]

Never give fish the power to emit lightning, it goes to their head every time.

[weirdnaturalscience]

idk if these are weird talents but I have a really good sense of tastes/how to pair them with other tastes, am really good with details, and while I'm not good at fighting I like to do it?

Omg hi hello :D this is my favorite ask so far because it was really hard and the answer is probably the weirdest.

An animal with excellent taste so to speak? The animal with the most taste buds (so many that they are literally covering its body) is the catfish. (Though I doubt they can pair the right wine with a meal.) We have about 10,000 taste buds - catfish have 100,000 and can have as many as 175,000. They can taste anything that touches their bodies. This is kinda terrifying to read about ngl. Catfish rely on their incredible sense of taste and smell, as well as acute hearing, because their eyes are quite small.

And here I am trying to connect this to being able to fight and I remembered about ELECTRIC CATFISH. Some species of catfish found in the Nile can produce electric shocks, which they use to kill prey. But it gets cooler - their ability to produce these electric shocks was used to treat arthritis pain by the ancient Egyptians. These catfish weren't large enough to kill a person, just create a mild tingle. Early TENS unit lmao. Nice.

(There are catfish big enough to produce a shock that will stun a person though....much to think about. But to kill a person a very large catfish would have to shock them multiple times. There are no documented cases of this happening. No deaths by electric catfish. Yet. So that's nice.)

[somethingweirdisawtoday]

Electric catfish in an aquarium tank designed like a tiny lab.

Japan is weird

[nature-nerd-sarah]

The rivers and lakes of Africa are home to an incredible diversity of fish, a lot of them both weird and colourful. And in this hall, a number of them get a home in four aquaria, covering most of the walls. And because this is the most Africa-dedicated part of the aquarium, an acacia and a statue of a lion are almost mandatory.

[clingynepenthes]

Pet electric catfish! Apparently this individual is so used to be handled it no longer zaps its owner. Still, be cautious about electric catfish as pets. The genus Malapterurus has species that can can grow to an incredibly inconvenient and aquarium-busting four feet (120+ cm), although some species, like M. beninensis and M. barbatus, grow only to 8-9 inches (20-25 cm).

M. barbatus

M. beninensis

Good luck telling them apart though.

[catfishinablendrrr]