Declassified CIA Study Probes Electric Fish Sensory Systems
The record S. Government Military. The document itself is a scientific investigation report contracted in March 1973, and its subject is not weapons or surveillance in any conventional sense but the electrical biology of a South American freshwater fish.
The fish is Sternarchus albifrons, a weak electric species whose electric organs the study states are derived from nervous tissue rather than from modified muscle tissue like the majority of other electric fishes. That single anatomical distinction drives much of what follows in the record, because it produces a signal with a very high rate that is both phase and amplitude modulated. The report's summary explains that the morphological and physiological characteristics of the fish's electroreceptors, both ampullary and tuberous, are discussed, and that special instrumentation required for the role of these electroreceptors in pattern recognition was developed.
What makes the file worth reading closely is the pairing of exotic biology…