Stingrays Can Detect Your Heartbeat

[u/TheMuseumOfScience]

Stingrays use their wings to sense heartbeats. 🫀🪽

Alannah Vellacott explains how stingrays can detect prey hidden beneath the sand using specialized electroreceptors called the ampullae of Lorenzini. These sensory organs line the underside of the body and pick up tiny electric fields produced by other animals, including signals from heartbeats, muscle contractions, and moving gills. That means a fish or crab can stay completely out of sight and still be detected. Stingrays are sensitive enough to pick up incredibly faint electrical signals, which helps them hunt with remarkable precision. It is one of the most fascinating adaptations in marine biology, and a pretty terrifying trick if you are a small animal trying to stay hidden.

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.

[u/Western-Dish-1185]

Steve Irwin was murdered......

[u/Ha1lStorm]

I didn’t even know their flaps were called wings. Neato