Electric Eel

The electrical stun processed by one of these eels is skilled for the purpose of murdering not just a human but even a horse. Unsurprisingly, electric eels are among the most feared fish in South America.

Over 80 percent of this fish’s body volume is taken up by its electrical organs. These are in the form of plates consisting of white, jellylike areas divided by harder tissue. There are about half a million plates in the body and they can generate an electrical discharge of at least 550 volts with a current of 2 amps, producing a kilowatt of power. Each and every stun keeps up for just an exceptionally short time; about three-thousandths of a second. But electric eels can produce as many as 150 shocks in a hour,with no fall-off in output.

Freshwater Eels

From willow-leaved larvae to snakelike adults, eels have interested and bewildered us for a long time. Even today, they still have many secrets, some of which we may never uncover.

The jaw-dropping story of European and American eels starts, not in the rivers where the adults are found, but in deep water in part of the western Atlantic known as the Sargasso Sea. In the case of the European eel, this is some 4,000 miles away from the home rivers of the adults. Larval eels (known as leptocephali) take up to three years to cover the distance from their place of birth to their eventual homes. For the American eel, the journey is much shorter, but it can still take the larvae about a year to complete the trip.