* Astronomy

96 percent of vertebrates descended from common ancestor with 'sixth sense'

Although humans experience the world through five senses, sharks, paddlefishes and certain other aquatic vertebrates have another sense: They can detect weak electrical fields in the water and use this information to detect prey, communicate and orient themselves.
Now, a study in the Oct. 11 issue of Nature Communications that caps more than 25 years of work finds that the vast majority of vertebrates -- some 30,000 species of land animals (including humans) and a roughly equal number of ray-finned fishes -- descended from a common ancestor that had a well-developed electroreceptive system.
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