In biology, the electric organ is an organ common to all electric fish used for the purposes of creating an electric field. The electric organ is derived from modified nerve or muscle tissue. The electric discharge from this organ is used for navigation, communication, defence and also sometimes for the incapacitation of prey.
Read more about Electric Organ: Research History, Electrocytes, Electric Organ Discharge, Further Peer-reviewed Reading
Famous quotes containing the words electric and/or organ:
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“But alas! I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises, that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)