Topic summary
Electrolocation
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Electroreception and electrogenesis.
Electrolocation
Electroreceptive animals use the sense to locate objects around them. This is important in ecological niches where the animal cannot depend on vision: for example in caves, in murky water, and at night. Electrolocation can be passive, sensing electric fields such as those generated by the muscle movements of buried prey, or active, the electrogenic predator generating a weak electric field to allow it to distinguish between conducting and non-conducting objects in its vicinity.