In the Dark

I was reading about these fish. They’re called elephantnose fish, and they know how to live in the dark—down at the murky bottoms of a few large African rivers. A specialized organ in their tail projects an electrical field into the water, then receptors in their skin detect distortions to the field. That’s how they probe and understand their environment. That’s how they “see” in the dark.  

Here’s something else about elephantnose fish: they are social. So social, in fact, that they can read each other’s electrical fields—not just their own. They can intercept each other’s emissions. Each fish’s worldview is enhanced by the perceptions emanating from the other fish around it. It’s called “collective sensing,” apparently, and per the article I was reading, it had never before been documented in biology. 

But I’ve known about it for a while. In humans anyway. Because thirty years ago, after my brother died brutally in childhood, my family inhabited a world as dark as any African river bottom. We moved together blindly through black waters, wordlessly sharing information. This was the electrical message we beamed to each other, right through our skin, back and forth, a thousand times: I cannot speak of him. I cannot speak of his death. And this, for a time, kept us alive in the dark.

Katherine Frankowski is a Minnesota-based writer covering technology, art, psychology, and family life. She lives by a small lake, drives a green minivan, and loves her kin. More at katherinehengelfrankowski.com.

This essay is a Short Reads original.