Ancestor with an electrifying sixth sense
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About 96 percent of vertebrates—30,000 land animals (including humans) and roughly an equal number of fish—descend from a common ancestor with a sixth sense: electroreception.
The species that lived around 500 million years ago was probably a predatory marine fish with good eyesight, jaws, and teeth and a lateral line system for detecting water movements, visible as a stripe along the flank of most fishes.
With as many as 70,000 electroreceptors in its snout and the skin of its head, the paddlefish has the most extensive electrosensory array of any living animal. A scanning electron micrograph of the head of a developing paddlefish (above) shows pores of the lateral line and electroreceptive organs.
Full story at Futurity.
Photo credit: Willy Bemis
