Mormyrus

Mormyrus is a genus of ray-finned fish in the family Mormyridae. They are weakly electric, enabling them to navigate, to find their prey, and to communicate with other electric fish.^[1]

Mormyrus
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Osteoglossiformes
Family:	Mormyridae
Genus:	Mormyrus Linnaeus, 1758
Species
See text
Synonyms
Mormyrodes Gill 1862 Mormyrus (Scrophicephalus) Swainson 1838 Scrophicephalus (Swainson 1838) Solenomormyrus Bleeker 1874

Species

Mormyrus caballus (above), Mormyrus rume (below)

Mormyrus hasselquistii (above), Mormyrus niloticus (below)

There are currently 22 recognized species in this genus:^[2][3]

• Mormyrus bernhardi Pellegrin, 1926 (Bernhard's elephant-snout fish)
• Mormyrus caballus Boulenger, 1898
  • Mormyrus caballus asinus Boulenger, 1915
  • Mormyrus caballus bumbanus Boulenger, 1909
  • Mormyrus caballus caballus Boulenger, 1898
  • Mormyrus caballus lualabae Reizer, 1964
• Mormyrus casalis Vinciguerra, 1922 (Somali mormyrid)
• Mormyrus caschive Linnaeus, 1758 (Eastern bottlenose elephant snout)
• Mormyrus cyaneus T. R. Roberts & D. J. Stewart, 1976 (Lower Congo River mormyrid)
• Mormyrus goheeni Fowler, 1919 (Liberian mormyrid)
• Mormyrus hasselquistii Valenciennes, 1847 (Elephant snout)
• Mormyrus hildebrandti W. K. H. Peters 1882 (Hildebrandt's elephant-snout fish)
• Mormyrus iriodes T. R. Roberts & D. J. Stewart, 1976 (Inga mormyrid)
• Mormyrus kannume Forsskål, 1775 (Elephant-snout fish)
• Mormyrus lacerda Castelnau, 1861 (Western bottlenose mormyrid)
• Mormyrus longirostris W. K. H. Peters, 1852 (Eastern bottlenose mormyrid)
• Mormyrus macrocephalus Worthington, 1929 (largehead mormyrid)
• Mormyrus macrophthalmus Günther, 1866 (Niger mormyrid)
• Mormyrus niloticus (Bloch & J. G. Schneider, 1801) (Egyptian trunkfish)
• Mormyrus ovis Boulenger, 1898
• Mormyrus rume Valenciennes, 1847 (Senegal mormyrid)
  • Mormyrus rume proboscirostris Boulenger, 1898
  • Mormyrus rume rume Valenciennes 1847
• Mormyrus subundulatus T. R. Roberts, 1989 (Bandama mormyrid)
• Mormyrus tapirus Pappenheim 1905
• Mormyrus tenuirostris W. K. H. Peters, 1882 (Athi elephant-snout fish)
• Mormyrus thomasi Pellegrin, 1938 (French Congo mormyrid)

In culture

This section is an excerpt from Mormyridae § In culture.[edit]

Bronze figurine of Oxyrhynchus fish, Late Period-Ptolemaic Egypt

The Medjed was a sacred fish in Ancient Egypt. At the city of Per-Medjed, better known as Oxyrhynchus, whose name means "sharp-nosed" after the fish, archaeologists have found fishes depicted as bronze figurines, mural paintings, or wooden coffins in the shape of fishes with downturned snouts, with horned sun-disc crowns like those of the goddess Hathor. The depictions have been described as resembling members of the genus Mormyrus.^[4]

References

1. Bullock, Theodore H.; Bodznick, D. A.; Northcutt, R. G. (1983). "The phylogenetic distribution of electroreception: Evidence for convergent evolution of a primitive vertebrate sense modality" (PDF). Brain Research Reviews. 6 (1): 25–46. doi:10.1016/0165-0173(83)90003-6. hdl:2027.42/25137. PMID 6616267. S2CID 15603518.
2. "Mormyridae" (PDF). Deeplyfish- fishes of the world. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
3. Froese, Rainer; Pauly, Daniel (eds.). "Species in genus Mormyrus". FishBase. June 2017 version.
4. Van Neer, Wim; Gonzalez, Jérôme (2019). "A Late Period fish deposit at Oxyrhynchus (el-Bahnasa, Egypt)". In Peters, Joris; McGlynn, George; Goebel, Veronika (eds.). Documenta Archaeobiologiae Animals: Cultural Identifiers In Ancient Societies? (PDF). Rahden, Westfalia, Germany: Verlag Marie Leidorf. ISBN 978-3-89646-674-7.