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
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Osteoglossiformes
Family:	Mormyridae
Subfamily:	Mormyrinae
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 felixi Pellegrin 1939
• 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 and Pauly, Daniel, eds. (2017). Species of Mormyrus in 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.