Banded Knifefish

The banded knifefish (Gymnotus carapo) is a knifefish native to South America.

The banded knifefish is gray in color with a band of large black spots outlined with yellow on either side. They can grow up to 60 cm (about 24 in) long. It lives in lakes and streams in virtually all of South America except for Chile. It is also native to Trinidad.

This species, as with all Gymnotiformes, has the capability to generate weak electric charges, and then measure the disturbance in the field of electricity created. This system is used for navigation by the fish.

Banded knifefish eat benthos, such as plants, arthropods, detritus, mollusks, worms, and small fish.

Famous quotes containing the word banded:

    That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!—only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)