Does the eel use electrical fields to navigate? — Science News, June 24, 1972
Many species of ocean fish [such as American eels] migrate over massive distances. Some of them accomplish that with such excessive accuracy that they will come 1000’s of miles to return to the stream or space the place they had been born. Naturalists naturally marvel how they do it. One of the ideas is that they use electrical energy.
Update
It’s nonetheless a thriller how the American eel (Anguilla rostrata) navigates to its breeding grounds. But a rising physique of proof has shifted focus from electrical energy to magnetic fields. Experiments recommend that the American eel’s European cousin, A. anguilla, appears to comply with a magnetic map to the North Atlantic’s Sargasso Sea, guided by an inner compass (SN Online: 4/13/17). In March, scientists proposed that freshly spawned American and European eels comply with paths of accelerating magnetic depth from the Sargasso Sea to their freshwater properties. As adults, the eels might sense lowering depth to retrace the trail to their birthplace.