Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I
Have Often Observed The Same Phenomenon In Experimenting On Frogs.
The torpedo moves the pectoral fins convulsively every time it emits a
stroke; and this stroke is more or less painful, according as the
immediate contact takes place by a greater or less surface.
We
observed that the gymnotus gives the strongest shocks without making
any movement with the eyes, head, or fins.* (* The anal fin of the
gymnoti only has a sensible motion when these fishes are excited under
the belly, where the electric organ is placed.) Is this difference
caused by the position of the electric organ, which is not double in
the gymnoti? or does the movement of the pectoral fins of the torpedo
directly prove that the fish restores the electrical equilibrium by
its own skin, discharges itself by its own body, and that we generally
feel only the effect of a lateral shock?
We cannot discharge at will either a torpedo or a gymnotus, as we
discharge at will a Leyden jar or a Voltaic battery. A shock is not
always felt, even on touching the electric fish with both hands. We
must irritate it to make it give the shock. This action in the
torpedos, as well as in the gymnoti, is a vital action; it depends on
the will only of the animal, which perhaps does not always keep its
electric organs charged, or does not always employ the action of its
nerves to establish the chain between the positive and negative poles.
It is certain that the torpedo gives a long series of shocks with
astonishing celerity; whether it is that the plates or laminae of its
organs are not wholly exhausted, or that the fish recharges them
instantaneously.
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