Elephant fishes (English), Mormyrids, mormyre (French) With more
than 200 species in 20 genera, the Family Mormyridae is a modern
radiation within the Osteoglossomorpha, an ancient lineage of
teleost fishes in which most other living groups are species-
poor. Mormyrids are found only in Africa, in freshwater habitats
over most of the continent with the exception of the Sahara,
northernmost Mahgreb and southernmost Cape provinces. Mormyrids
reach their highest diversity in the river systems of Central
and West Africa and are often the numerically most abundant kind
of fish in riverine habitats. Mormyrid fishes have long served
humans as an important food source along Africa's inland
waterways. Ancient Egyptians accurately depicted mormyrids on
the walls of their tombs and even worshipped Mormyrus in the
temple of Oxyrhynchus. However, scientists only discovered
mormyrids' most unusual characteristic in the latter half of the
20th Century: an active electric sense by means of which they
orient to their environme