The Shark’s Sixth Sense
Sharks are arguably one of the oceans/ best hunters; they’re living sensors. Along shark’s snouts are tiny gel-filled pores called the ampullae of Lorenzini, which detect the electrical fields given off by muscles and heartbeats. This ability, called electroreception, allows them to locate prey buried beneath sand and navigate entire oceans by sensing Earth’s magnetic field. They can detect electrical signals as faint as a billionth of a volt and smell a single drop of blood in millions of gallons of water. Beyond these skills, they also are gifted with night vision, vibration detection, and perfect hydrodynamics, creating one of Earth’s best hunters. Sharks have been fine-tuning these senses for over 400 million years, long before the first dinosaurs appeared. They don’t just swim through the ocean, they read it.
