Study
Electroreception and electrolocation in platypus
Scheich, H.; Langner, G.; Tidemann, C.; Coles, R. B.; Guppy, A.
Nature, 1986
Platypuses were presented with weak electric fields in water, delivered by submerged electrodes producing no smell, no sound and no visible target, and their orientation responses recorded. Electrophysiological recording from the trigeminal system established that the bill responds to those fields and identified thresholds.
- Studied in
- Ornithorhynchus anatinus
- Sample size
- platypuses tested behaviourally and electrophysiologically
Platypuses orient towards and attack weak electric dipole fields in the absence of any other cue, responding to gradients of a fraction of a millivolt per centimetre. The receptors are in the bill and the signal travels by the trigeminal nerve. The animal dives with eyes, ears and nostrils sealed shut, so this is the sense doing the work underwater.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
The platypus bill is an electroreceptive organ used to locate prey, the first such system described in a mammal.
How NatureHQ reads it
The design is what makes this convincing: bare electrodes in water smell of nothing, make no sound and look like nothing, and the animal attacks them. That rules out every alternative explanation at once. The result also reframes the animal — a platypus hunting is not a mammal groping about in murky water, it is a mammal that has closed its eyes and switched to a sense we do not have. Everything else about the bill follows from that, including why it is so large and so densely innervated.
- Laboratory conditions with artificial fields; the strength and shape of fields from real prey were characterised separately.
- Small numbers, as with all platypus work — they are difficult to keep and difficult to test.
- Establishes the sense, not how it is combined with the mechanical sense in the same bill.
The electrodes that smell of nothing
How does a platypus find prey underwater with its eyes, ears and nostrils shut?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Nature PortfolioPublished in a Nature Portfolio journal.
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-11.