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Ancient human ancestor had a sixth sense

New research shows that humans and many land animals may have descended from a creature that had an enhanced electroreceptive sense.

By Bryan NelsonWed, Oct 12 2011 at 9:50 PM EST
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shark SIXTH SENSE: It’s likely that our ancestors could detect weak electrical fields much in the same way that sharks, paddlefishes and certain other aquatic vertebrates still do today. (Photo: StormyDog/flickr)
Humans are traditionally understood to possess only five senses, but now new research into our evolutionary past suggests that there may have been a time when our distant ancestors had an enhanced 'sixth sense' which we have since lost, according to a Cornell University press release.
 
No, this doesn't mean that our ancestors could see dead people. But it does mean that they could likely detect weak electrical fields much in the same way that sharks, paddlefishes and certain other aquatic vertebrates still do today.
 
The study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that our electroreceptive ancestor would have lived some 500 million years ago and likely gave rise to the vast majority of modern-day vertebrates, a group that includes some 30,000 species of land animals, as well as an equal number of ray-finned fishes.
 
Researchers were even able to paint a picture of what this common ancestor would have looked like. Like other electroreceptive creatures living today, it would have been an aquatic organism-- likely a predatory marine fish with good eyesight, jaws and sharp teeth. It would have used its sixth sense to pinpoint the location of moving prey, and possibly also to communicate.
 
The ancient extrasensory fish would have represented a common ancestor of both the ray-finned fishes, or actinopterygians, and the lobe-finned fishes, or sarcopterygians-- the latter of which eventually gave rise to land vertebrates, such as us. It therefore establishes an evolutionary link between the many known electroreceptive ray-finned fishes, like paddlefish and sturgeon, and the few land animals that still retain the sense.
 
"This study caps questions in developmental and evolutionary biology, popularly called 'evo-devo,' that I’ve been interested in for 35 years," said Willy Bemis, Cornell professor and a senior author of the paper.
 
Evo-devo, which is an informal title for evolutionary developmental biology, compares the developmental processes of different organisms to determine their ancestral relationships. Until this research was completed, little was understood about the common evolutionary relationships that existed between animals with electroreceptive organs and those without them. For instance, scientists were largely left to wonder whether such organs evolved independently along different ancestral lines or whether there really was a deep evolutionary relationship.
 
The reason for the mystery rests with the fact that water conducts electricity better than air, so most land vertebrates lost their electroreceptive organs once they permanently lunged out of the sea. Only a few semi-aquatic land animals, such as the Mexican axolotl, retained the sense-- an important clue for researchers.
 
The deep evolutionary link was thus confirmed after the researchers witnessed how electrosensors in the Mexican axolotl develop in precisely the same pattern, from the same embryonic tissue, as they do in ray-finned fishes like paddlefish.
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Related Topics: Animal Research, Science

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anonymous
ElfPong 11/08/2011 19:30 PM

How does this lost sense differ from the way that I detect static electric fields and the proximity of people?

anonymous
Adam R 11/08/2011 18:43 PM

So could I write an article about organic molecules being found on a distant comet and give it the title, "Human ancestor found on Oort Cloud comet!" because we use some of the same molecules in our own processes? And because maybe part of that comet crashed into the Earth and started life many billions of years ago? I think a title like that would get me a lot of hits.

anonymous
syntheticgod 11/08/2011 18:38 PM

I clicked on this because the title looked interesting. I thought to myself, "Wow. Did they discover that Neanderthals could detect electric fields?" Nope, some group of animals 500 million years ago. While technically true, I don't consider animals that existed half a billion years ago to be 'human ancestors' for the purposes of giving an article a title. Hominids, definitely. Primates, sure. Mammals, maybe. What a rip off and I regret having wasted the time writing this

anonymous
nightlight 11/07/2011 09:23 AM

Maybe your granddaddy was a fish or a monkey, but not mine. God created man in his own image, and I don't care to worship a fish.

hogorina
hogorina 10/30/2011 18:04 PM

GLORY TO THE CREATOR WHO MADE A BRAVE MEN
We can comb America from North to South, and still find a race that loves peace and security,
wherein liberty is defined in the Declaration of independence. Whenever a race claims to be secure in its material possessions, then such mankind become fools. Any citizen of these now
enjoying being a mental slave of this Disunited States of Amerika is an outright coward, and a menace, in willingly supporting a national government being.... More

anonymous
Hold up a sec, 10/17/2011 21:40 PM

first line. No, just... no. We have, based on our current understanding of physiology, as many as 15 to 20 different senses. You've got your standard touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell, but then you also have to consider the vestigial senses that incorporate various degrees of bodily awareness (you intuitively know where your hand is in relation to your face without even looking, right), time (we know it passes, though our perception may change based on our level of concentration, external.... More

anonymous
Really? 10/17/2011 05:25 AM

If your counting sensing electrical currents as a sense then how about sensing temperature or humidity or balance or plenty of the other senses you forgot you had because your momma didn't know better?

anonymous
paradigm shift 10/16/2011 14:05 PM

so bees and bats and birds and fish are all MORE advanced than humans.

no wonder we are so arrogant and destructive..we hate everybody and everything who is better than us which seems to be everybody and everything.

thank god for the protestors trying to take back our future. instead of trolls taking us back to 18th century....

anonymous
Anonymous 10/18/2011 20:50 PM

There is nothing such as being "advanced" in the evolution process. You can only be adapted to certain situations. A bat wouldn't really be "advanced" in the ocean, for example.

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