Latest Lateral line Stories
[ Video: FILOSE Fish Robot ] | [ Video: Robotic Fish Working Through In Flow ] | [ Video: FILOSE Research Project on Fish Locomotion and Sensing ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Researchers writing in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A say they have developed a new robotic fish that has lateral line sensing capabilities. The FILOSE team members have spent four years investigating fish lateral line sensing, which is a sensing organ found in aquatic...
University of Rhode Island marine biologist Jacqueline Webb gets an occasional strange look when she brings fish to the Orthopedics Research Lab at Rhode Island Hospital. While the facility's microCT scanner is typically used to study bone density and diseases like osteoporosis, it is also providing new insights into the skull structure and sensory systems of fish. A professor of biological sciences and director of the marine biology program at URI, Webb studies the lateral line system, a...
A new study finds that sharks, paddlefishes and certain other aquatic vertebrates have a sixth sense: the ability to detect weak electrical fields in the water, and to use this information to detect prey, communicate and orient themselves. The study, which caps more than a quarter century of work, found that the vast majority of vertebrates – roughly 30,000 species of land animals (including humans) and a roughly equal number of ray-finned fishes – descended from a common ancestor that...
This image may bring to mind a patchwork quilt, or a picture taken from a gallery of abstract paintings, but the artisan behind it is actually Mother Nature, with a little help from scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. Using an electron microscope, Virginie Lecaudey in Darren Gilmour's group at EMBL captured this snapshot of the beginnings of an organ which plays a central role in how zebrafish perceive the world around them "“ the lateral...
Biomimetic guidance could make AUVs more truly autonomousClever as a blind fish, the underwater robot "Snookie" can orient itself in murky waters with an artificial sensory organ inspired by the so-called lateral-line system, found in fish and some amphibians. The experimental vehicle was developed by researchers at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen within the framework of the CoTeSys (Cognition for Technical Systems) excellence cluster. In the future, the researchers expect such...
Fish and some amphibians possess a unique sensory capability in the so-called lateral-line system. It allows them, in effect, to "touch" objects in their surroundings without direct physical contact or to "see" in the dark. Professor Leo van Hermmen and his team in the physics department of the Technische Universities Muenchen are exploring the fundamental basis for this sensory system. What they discover might one day, through biomimetic engineering, better equip robots...
Lateral line sensory system detects vibrations from unseen preyMost fish rely primarily on their vision to find prey to feed upon, but a University of Rhode Island biologist and her colleagues have demonstrated that a group of African cichlids feeds by using its lateral line sensory system to detect minute vibrations made by prey hidden in the sediments.The lateral line system is composed of a canal embedded in the scales along the side of the body of a fish, around its eyes and on its lower...
NASA -- Sharks are known for their almost uncanny ability to detect electrical signals while hunting and navigating. Now researchers have traced the origin of those electrosensory powers to the same type of embryonic cells that gives rise to many head and facial features in humans. The discovery, reported by University of Florida scientists in the current edition of Evolution & Development, identifies neural crest cells, which are common in vertebrate development, as a source of sharks'...
