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Asked by anon-187186 to Stewart, Miriam, Marton, Laura, Kathryn, David on 13 Nov 2018.
Question: If you eletricute a pufferfish, would it puff up? what about if you eletricute a porkipine? will all its spines stick up?
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David Ho answered on 13 Nov 2018:
This is perhaps one of my favourite questions so far. I don’t know the answer for sure, and I don’t know if it would be ethical to test this out! But I know that an electric shock causes muscles to contract, so if you shocked the right muscles it’s possible that you could get a pufferfish to puff up or a porcupine’s spines to stick up.
Interestingly the main reason people’s hair sticks up because of electricity is actually static electricity, not an electric shock. Electric charge builds up on the hairs (like when you rub your hair with a balloon) and causes them to repel each other. I wouldn’t think that the same thing would happen to a porcupine because porcupine spines are a lot heavier than hairs, so their own weight would keep them down.
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Stewart Martin-Haugh answered on 13 Nov 2018:
I agree with David. I think you could test this ethically on a dead pufferfish or porcupine.
People first started passing electric currents through dead animals in the 18th century (no, I don’t know why they decided to try it either). They found that electricity would make frog’s legs twitch. This captured people’s imagination and helped inspire Frankenstein. Eventually people realised that electrical signals are how we control our muscles all the time.
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Miriam Hogg answered on 13 Nov 2018:
Puffer fish puff up by gulping up lots of water very quickly. If there are muscles involved in that then an electrical charge might make it puff up. But I’m not sure!
As for porcupines, they are able to move their needles a bit due to their muscles, so an electric shock would probably get its spines to stick up.
I wouldn’t try it on the poor guys though!
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