Peters’s elephant-nose fish is an African freshwater elephantfish.
Come down to Wholesale Tropicals in Bethnal Green to see our fantastic fish stock.
Elephant Nose
£25.00
Description
Peters’s elephant-nose fish is an African freshwater elephantfish. Other names in English include elephantnose fish, long-nosed elephant fish, and Ubangi mormyrid, after the Ubangi River.
As the Latin name petersii confirms it is named after someone called “Peters”. It uses electrolocation to find prey, and has the largest brain-to-body oxygen use ratio of all known vertebrates.
Peters’s elephantnose fish are native to the rivers of West & Central Africa, in particular the lower Niger River basin, the Ogun River basin and in the upper Chari River.
It is a dark brown to black in colour, laterally compressed (averaging 23–25 cm), with a rear dorsal fin and anal fin of the same length. Its caudal or tail fin is forked. It has two stripes on its lower pendicular. Its most striking feature, as its names suggest, is a trunk-like protrusion on the head. This is not actually a nose, but a sensitive extension of the mouth, that it uses for self-defence, communication, navigation, and finding worms and insects to eat. This organ, called the Schnauzenorgan, is covered in electroreceptors, as is much of the rest of its body.
The elephantnose uses a weak electric field, which it generates with specialised cells called electrocytes, which evolved from muscle cells, to find food, to navigate in dark or turbid waters, and to find a mate. Peters’s elephantnose fish can live to approximately 6–10 years.
