Electricity is one essential thing for humans’ life. However do you know that some animals have electricity power or even produce electricity? Calm down, they produce electricity or have electricity power as their way to protect themselves from predator.
Animals have their own way of protecting themselves and getting their prey. One of them is by using electricity. It’s really wonderful to know that animals have electricity power in their body. Do you want to know what the electric animals are? Get to know these 8 electric animals that might give you a shock!
- Stargazer
This is a fish species which is equipped with modified eye muscles that are able to emit electric charges. They emit this electric charges to distract and confuse their prey.
When their prey is distracted or confused, then they will leap onto it. Some scientists also thought that this electric charges might also be able to startle the potential predators for a quite long time for the stargazer to escape.
- Electric Eel
Electric eel must be the most famous and familiar electric animal ever. This small animal is commonly found in ponds and streams, especially in the Amazon and Orinoco basins of South America.
There is one fact you should know, electric eel is not really “eel”, it is closely related to catfish, so the name is quite misleading. Electric eels are equipped with electrogenic cells.
These electrogenic cells are used to stun prey and defend themselves from predators. Moreover, those electrogenic cells also can be used to communicate to other electric eels.
You need to be careful with these electric eels as their electric shock might cause heart failure after repeated jolts. So, don’t ever think to approach this creature.
- Guiana Dolphins
Dolphins are always friendly and smart creatures. However, Guiana dolphins might not be the same as other dolphins. If you look into their past, these Guiana dolphins are born with whiskers on their snouts.
The whiskers are able to fall off, but the pits where the whiskers are anchored to are used to sense the electric fields emitted by the preys. Similar to shark, these dolphins also have receptors in their snouts that will be able to detect the presence of food.
If you are interested to know more about dolphins, you can read reasons why dolphins often stranded on beach and how to save their life.
- Oriental Hornet
You might be familiar with this animal just like a character in a comic book, but in real, the Oriental hornet get electric power from the sun. This small and incredible insects have specialized yellow tissues that are able to absorb sunlight and the brown tissues that are in charge of generating electricity.
The Oriental hornet uses electricity as its power source. There’s no wonder, this insect is really active during day times when the sun was the most intense.
Hornet is one of the dangerous animals of China and also the creepiest ants over the world.
- Electric Rays
Electric ray is another sea animal that is able to generate electric shocks. Electric rays are able to zap their predators and preys by using the electricity that is generated by kidney-shaped organs that they have.
Surprisingly, they are also able to control the level of electric shocks that they generate, and tend to send low doses of it to give warning to their predators. In contrast, they will give high dose of the electric shock to their prey.
- Electric Catfish
Similar to electric eel (which is not eel at all), electric catfish is also able to generate electric shock. Electric catfish is equipped with organs with its head that enable it to zap all the preys with 350 volts of electricity!
- Bees
Bees are mostly attracted to flowers with bright petals and good fragrance. If the flowers are visited, they often feel the change of electric charge and this condition enables bees to choose whether the flower is worth investigating or not. Bees only visit the flowers that have not been occupied or by other bees before.
Bee is also known as one of the most dangerous animals in Australia. Despite their small size, you still need to be cautious of them! However, honey bees can also be helpful for your garden as elaborated in benefits of using honey bees for gardening.
- Geckos
Geckos are great climbers of smooth surfaces. Have you ever thought about how they are able to do that? This article about ever wonder how gecko stick on the wall? We will tell you will give you some detailed knowledge about it.
In short, geckos have electrostatic forces on their pads that enable them to climb smooth surfaces just like Spiderman does. They are able to stay anchored on the wall because of the charge difference between their feet and the surface they are climbing.
There are so many species of geckos around the world, such as Jaragua gecko, crested gecko and facts you may never heard and snazzy facts of leopard geckos.